LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

University  of  California. 


Class 


AlSr  AlVIEEICAN  EAILEOAD 
BUILDER 

JOHN  MURRAY  FORBES 


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■^^d^/ny^ay  ^yUiu<?n.  -c'-M'  /oy/^^^^f.^^ .a^^M/y^  Z^.^^^/ 


AN  AMERICAN  RAILEOAD 

BUILDER 

JOHN  MURRAY  FORBES . 

BY 

HENRY  GREENLEAF  PEARSON 


>  ».     J,       3      J  ' 


3  a       - 


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BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
1911 


v^ 


— e 


COPYRIGHT,   191 1,   BY  HENRY  GREENLEAF  PEARSON 
ALL   RIGHTS    RESERVED 

Published  October  iqij 


«      •  <  • 

•  f    *   » 

•  «     '    « 


"  I    • 


PREFACE 

THE  present  volume  differs  from  the  ''  Let- 
ters and  Recollections  of  John  Murray 
Forbes/'  published  in  1899,  not  only  in  being 
an  abridged  biography,  but  in  having  been 
written  to  tell  the  story,  merely  outlined  there,  of 
the  part  played  by  Forbes  in  the  development  of 
the  railroad  system  of  the  Middle  West.  He  was 
president  of  the  Michigan  Central  Railroad  from 
1846  to  1855 ;  of  the  Chicago,  Burlington,  and 
Quincy  Railroad  he  was  director  from  1857  to 
1898,  and  president  from  1878  to  1881.  In  these 
positions  his  work  was  preeminently  that  of  ob- 
taining capital  and  of  maintaining  a  sound  finan- 
cial policy ;  the  matters,  to-day  so  important,  of 
rate-making  and  relations  with  state  and  federal 
government  practically  never  came  within  the 
scope  of  his  control.  The  reasons  why  his  labors 
were  almost  entirely  within  the  field  of  finance 
are  :  first,  that  in  the  period  before  the  Civil  War 
these  operating  problems  were  on  such  a  small 
scale  that  they  could  be  dealt  with  by  the  general 
superintendents  in  the  West;  and  second,  that 
after  the  war,  though  granger  difficulties  and 
questions  of  pooling  and  rebates  were  assuming 
more  and  more  importance,  officials  in  the  East, 

225951 


vi  PREFACE 

while  vaguely  feeling  their  significance,  were  de- 
void of  experience  therein.  Forbes  had  been 
among  the  first  to  see  the  shadow  of  coming 
events  and  to  realize  what  manifold  qualifications 
the  railroad  president  of  the  new  age  must  pos- 
sess ;  but  now  the  weight  of  years  and  the  bur- 
den of  financial  responsibility  were  heavy  upon 
him,  and  in  matters  of  operating  management 
he  was  guided  by  the  judgment  of  Charles  E. 
Perkins,  already  a  master  in  that  field.  After 
Forbes's  victory  in  securing  the  reorganization 
of  the  Chicago,  Burlington,  and  Quincy,  in  1875, 
he  contributed  work  and  wisdom  for  many  years 
but  no  act  that  was  individually  dynamic.  The 
story  of  his  railroad  career  thus  belongs  almost 
entirely  to  the  world  of  finance  between  the  years 
1846  and  1881 ;  it  is  distinguished  there  by  its 
qualities  of  imagination,  of  daring,  and  of  mili- 
tant honesty. 

The  materials  for  this  study  have  been  chiefly 
the  immense  mass  of  Forbes's  correspondence  as 
preserved  in  his  letter-press  books,  —  a  maze  to 
which  his  unpublished  Reminiscences  have  served 
as  a  clue.  Except  for  the  annual  reports  of  the 
Michigan  Central  and  the  Chicago,  Burlington, 
and  Quincy  Railroads,  and  pertinent  state  and 
national  documents,  contemporary  matter  in  print 
is  meagre  and  throws  light,  if  at  all,  on  things 
done  rather  than  on  ways  by  which  they  were 


PREFACE  vii 

brought  to  pass.  The  numerous  theses  and  mono- 
graphs on  railroad  subjects  are  for  the  most 
part  devoted  to  the  study  of  conditions  since  the 
passage  of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Act  in  1887, 
dealing  with  earlier  history  only  in  the  most  gen- 
eral terms.  A  compensation  for  these  deficiencies 
has  been  the  fulness,  the  accuracy,  and  I  may 
add,  the  vivacity  of  Forbes's  letters.  Their  graphic 
power  and  their  revelation  of  personality  put 
them  in  the  class  with  letters  written  by  masters 
in  the  art ;  under  the  spell  of  his  pen  the  ways 
of  railroad  finance  become  paths  of  pleasantness. 
Scanty  as  are  the  selections  here  given,  they 
should;  like  the  originals  from  which  they  are 
taken,  show  better  than  anything  else  the  power 
of  their  writer  to  vitalize  and  to  humanize  every- 
thing that  he  touched. 


CONTENTS 


I.  Beginnings 1 

II.  The  Building  of  the  Michigan  Central  Rail- 
road     17 

III.  Railroad  Building  in  Illinois  and  Beyond      .    66 

IV.  Public  Service 107 

V.   A  Railroad  Battle 154 

VI.   The  End 181 

Appendix 187 

Index 193 

MAPS 

Railroads  in  Ohio,  Indiana,  Michigan,  and  Illinois, 
in  1852 30 

Railroads  in  Illinois  of  which  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  Sys- 
tem WAS  composed,  1852-1856 74 

C.  B.  &  Q.  System  in  1882 162 


AN 
AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

CHAPTER  I 

BEGINNINGS 

THE  family  into  which  John  Murray  Forbes 
was  born  was  well  known  in  Boston  in  the 
early  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  in  connec- 
tion with  the  maritime  commerce  that  was  the 
foundation  of  the  town's  prosperity.  His  mother, 
Margaret  Perkins,  had  three  brothers,  James, 
Thomas  Handasyd,  and  Samuel  G,  all  worthy 
merchants,  the  first  two  being  connected  with 
one  of  the  most  flourishing  houses  in  the  China 
trade ;  his  father,  Ralph  Bennet  Forbes,  had 
traveled  much  about  the  world  as  a  supercargo. 
When  the  course  of  business  kept  him  in  France, 
his  wife  joined  him,  taking  with  her  the  two 
oldest  sons,  Thomas  Tunno,  born  in  1803,  and 
Robert  Bennet,  born  in  1804.  At  Bordeaux,  on 
February  23,  1813,  John  Murray,  the  sixth  of 
their  eight  children,  was  born.  Soon  after  their 
return  to  this  country  the  father's  health  broke 
down,  and,  as  he  had  not  prospered  in  business, 


2      .      AN  AMERICAN  EAILROAD  BUILDER 

his  family  was  maintained  through  the  assistance 
of  his  brother  and  his  wife's  brothers. 

At  the  earHest  possible  moment  the  two  older 
sons  went  to  work.  Thomas  was  put  in  training 
to  be  the  agent  at  Canton  of  the  firm  of  J.  and 
T.  H.  Perkins ;  Bennet,  at  the  age  of  thirteen, 
was  sent  to  sea  before  the  mast,  to  become  a 
sailor.  The  rapid  rise  of  these  two  young  fellows 
shows  what  ability  and  opportunity,  when  joined 
together,  could  accomplish  in  those  days.  At 
eighteen  Tom  was  in  China ;  and  when  he  was 
twenty-six  was  in  full  charge  of  the  business  of 
the  firm  there.  At  twenty  Bennet  sailed  for  China 
as  captain  of  the  ship  Levant.  At  thirfcy,  gray- 
haired  and  with  a  comfortable  fortune,  he  left 
the  sea  and  settled  down  as  a  merchant  in  Boston. 

The  careers  of  the  older  brothers  had  a  marked 
influence  on  the  life  of  John.  In  the  years  of 
his  boyhood  he  saw,  as  the  consequence  of  his 
father's  sickness,  the  straitened  circumstances  of 
the  family,  their  dependence  on  the  benevolence 
of  others,  and  the  unselfish  efforts  of  Tom  and 
Bennet  to  contribute  to  the  family  income.  Even 
before  his  father's  death,  in  1824,  it  had  been 
possible,  through  their  earnings,  for  him  to  go 
away  to  school;  and  from  ten  to  fifteen  he  had 
the  advantage  of  the  best  education  that  boys  in 
the  United  States  at  that  time  could  obtain.  The 
Kound  Hill  School,  at  Northampton,  to  which 


BEGINNINGS  3 

the  first  families  of  Boston  sent  their  sons,  is 
famous  in  the  educational  annals  of  the  country 
for  the  sound  and  varied  training  which  it 
provided  and  for  the  stress  which  it  laid  on 
physical  development  and  healthy  out-door  life. 
To  the  fine  quality  of  its  head-master,  Joseph 
G.  Cogswell,  was  largely  due  the  success  of  the 
school.  Looking  back  on  this  life  in  later  years, 
and  comparing  it  with  the  college  life  of  the 
boys  whom  he  knew,  Forbes  was  inclined  to  think 
that  at  fifteen  he  had  received  better  trainino:  for 
the  world  than  they  were  getting.  "  Five  years 
of  drill,"  he  writes,  "  had  given  me  a  pretty 
good  foundation  in  Latin,  French,  Spanish, 
Arithmetic,  Book-keeping,  and  perhaps  Algebra 
(though  my  studies  in  the  higher  mathematics 
were  only  beginning),  besides  the  education  in 
riding,  dancing,  and  gymnastics  ...  to  wdiich 
perhaps  I  owe  my  long-continued  health.  Be  this 
as  it  may,  I  bade  adieu  to  school  life  with  a  fair 
reputation  for  scholarship  and  good  behavior, 
and  pretty  well  equipped  for  beginning  my  com- 
mercial training." 

The  testimony  of  Cogswell,  given  at  the  time 
when  John  left  school,  is  to  the  same  purport, 
and  is  stronger  still  concerning  the  pupil's  char- 
acter and  ability  and  the  affection  which  existed 
between  him  and  his  master. 

In  October,  1828,  John  entered  his  uncles' 


4  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

counting  house  in  Boston  to  prepare  himself  as 
speedily  as  possible  to  help  his  brother  Tom,  who 
was  about  to  be  made  head  of  the  branch  house 
at  Canton.  Though,  as  youngest  clerk,  his  first 
duties  were  the  usual  tasks  of  sweeping  the  store, 
making  the  fire,  closing  up  at  night,  copying 
letters,  and  running  errands,  his  advance  was 
rapid.  At  the  end  of  ten  months  he  writes  to  his 
brother  Tom  that  he  has  already  mastered  the 
minutiae  of  business  more  quickly  than  he  has 
ever  learned  anything  else,  and  that  he  is  im- 
patient for  the  next  move.  From  childhood  he 
had  lived  in  the  atmosphere  of  business  and  had 
opportunities  to  exercise  his  natural  aptitude  for 
trade.  It  was  the  custom  of  the  day  for  clerks  to 
be  given  a  small  space  in  the  vessels  belonging 
to  the  firm,  for  trading  ventures  on  their  own 
account.  Part  of  Tom's  space  was  shared  with 
his  youngest  brother,  who  at  eight  years  of  age 
had  written  :  "  My  adventure  "  —  tea,  or  silk,  or 
possibly  Chinese  toys  —  "  sells  very  well  in  the 
village."  At  seventeen  he  had  by  these  ventures 
accumulated  a  thousand  dollars.  He  thus  early 
justified  the  expectations  which  the  success  of 
his  brothers  had  raised,  and  his  chances  were  the 
better  because,  as  it  happened,  neither  of  the  sons 
of  the  partners  showed  great  interest  in  the  busi- 
ness of  the  firm. 

The  opportunity  for  which  John  Forbes  was 


BEGINNINGS  6 

waiting  came  unexpectedly  and  on  the  wings  of 
disaster.  In  February,  1830,  news  reached  Boston 
of  the  drowning  of  his  brother  Thomas  six  months 
before.  As  he  had  been  the  sole  representative 
in  Canton  of  the  firm,  the  affairs  of  the  branch 
house  were  in  confusion.  In  July,  in  company 
with  Mr.  Augustine  Heard,  John  sailed  for  China 
in  a  ship  commanded  by  his  brother  Bennet.  On 
their  arrival  at  Canton  in  November  an  arrange- 
ment was  made  whereby  the  business  of  J.  and 
T.  H.  Perkins  was  turned  over  to  another  Amer- 
ican house,  that  of  Russell  and  Company,  on 
condition  that  Mr.  Heard  be  received  into  the 
firm  as  a  partner.  Another  article  in  the  agree- 
ment was  to  the  effect  that  if  at  the  end  of  three 
years  John  Forbes  was  still  a  clerk  for  the  firm, 
he  should  be  admitted  to  partnership  for  a  term 
of  three  years.  This  understanding,  however,  was 
not  at  the  time  communicated  to  the  person  most 
concerned. 

Here,  then,  was  a  young  man,  not  yet  eight- 
een, in  a  position  of  great  trust,  with  plenty  of 
opportunities  to  show  his  superiors  what  stuff 
was  in  him,  and  also  with  good  openings  to  make 
money  on  his  own  account.  The  most  remark- 
able of  these  openings  came  through  his  acquaint- 
ance with  the  Chinese  mandarin,  Houqua.  One 
of  the  richest  merchants  in  China,  with  a  fortune 
of  fifteen  or  twenty  millions  of  dollars,  he  was 


6  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

the  head  of  the  Hong,  or  company  which  man- 
aged the  foreign  trade  of  China,  and  through 
which  all  diplomatic  affairs  were  then  conducted. 
For  him  Thomas  Forbes  had  acted  as  confiden- 
tial agent,  and  the  position  now  came  as  a  sort 
of  legacy  to  the  younger  brother.  The  swiftness 
with  which  the  newcomer  justified  this  mark  of 
confidence  shows  what  remarkable  powers  lay 
within  him,  ready  to  manifest  themselves  at  the 
first  chance.  He  conducted  Houqua's  foreign 
correspondence,  writing  the  answers  to  letters  in 
which  pubHc  affairs  and  diplomacy  were  min- 
gled with  business;  he  chartered  ships,  loaded 
them  with  tea  and  silks,  and  gave  instructions 
as  to  the  disposal  of  the  cargoes,  using  his  own 
name,  as  if  he  were  managing  his  own  property. 
For  this  work  he  received  ten  per  cent  of  the 
profits  of  the  trade.  Thanks  to  such  extraordi- 
nary opportunity,  he  was,  when  a  youth  of  eight- 
een and  nineteen,  known  to  Baring  Brothers 
and  other  great  banking  houses  as  a  China  mer- 
chant who  not  infrequently  had  as  much  as  half 
a  million  dollars  afloat  at  one  time. 

At  length  the  climate  told  on  the  young  man's 
health,  and  in  June,  1833,  he  was  at  home  again, 
after  an  absence  of  three  years.  Though  he  w^as 
only  twenty  years  old,  his  baldness  and  his  ma- 
ture bearing  made  people  credit  him  with  another 
decade.  In  business  he  had  already  done  well.  A 


BEGINNINGS  7 

year  before,  he  had  sent  home  money  for  the 
purchase  of  a  square  mile  of  land  in  Ohio,  —  the 
first  of  many  signs  of  his  passion  for  ownership 
in  the  soil;  and  now,  finding  his  old  school- 
master, Cogswell,  in  financial  difficulties,  he 
made  him  a  generous  loan  of  money, — the  sign 
of  another  trait  no  less  characteristic  and  persist- 
ent. 

"Love  was  in  the  next  degree."  In  writing 
home  from  Canton,  he  had  threatened  to  "  get 
married  within  a  week  after  arrival,"  and  had 
bidden  his  sisters  to  make  the  preliminary  selec- 
tion among  their  friends.  His  meeting  with  one 
of  these  friends,  Sarah  Hathaway  of  New  Bed- 
ford, drew  into  this  new  channel  all  his  intensity 
of  feeling  and  energy  of  action.  The  courtship 
and  the  engagement  were  short,  and  on  Febru- 
ary 8,  1834,  the  two  were  married.  Forbes  in 
his  Reminiscences  notes  that  there  was  some 
doubt  as  to  the  legality  of  the  ceremony,  for  at 
the  last  moment  it  was  discovered  that  the  banns 
had  not  been  made  out  in  the  form  necessary 
when  the  bridegroom  was  a  minor! 

Unluckily  for  a  man  who  had  accepted  the 
conditions  of  married  life,  Forbes's  knowledge 
gained  in  China  was  the  only  immediate  means 
by  which  he  could  earn  a  living.  He  thus  found 
himself  bound  to  accept  the  offer  of  a  place  as 
supercargo    on  a  vessel  going  to  Canton,  and 


8  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

obliged,  since  his  wife  was  a  very  bad  sailor,  to 
leave  her  behind.  In  less  than  a  month  from  the 
day  of  his  wedding  he  embarked  on  the  Logan 
for  Gibraltar  and  China.  Reaching  Canton  in 
August,  1834,  he  found  himself  caught ;  for  he 
then  first  learned  of  the  arrangement  made  in 
November,  1830,  by  virtue  of  which,  on  the  first 
of  January,  1834,  he  had  become  a  member  of 
the  firm  of  Russell  and  Company.  His  share  in 
its  profits  was  already  fourteen  thousand  dollars, 
and  with  him  in  the  firm,  Houqua  would  con- 
sent to  turn  his  business  over  to  it.  In  comparison 
with  the  position  thus  offered,  his  opportunities  as 
a  supercargo  were  insignificant.  He  hesitated, 
nevertheless,  and  agreed  to  stay  only  when  he 
found  that  Mr.  Heard,  whose  wretched  state  of 
health  made  his  return  to  America  most  import- 
ant, refused,  on  account  of  a  quarrel  with  one 
of  the  partners,  to  leave  the  helm  to  any  one  but 
himself.  Then  he  accepted  the  fate  of  his  three- 
years'  partnership. 

The  period  of  Forbes's  second  stay  in  China 
was  one  of  unique  opportunity.  The  East  India 
Company  had  just  relinquished  its  monopoly,  and 
a  house  of  such  high  reputation  as  Russell  and 
Company  was  able  to  secure  the  trade  of  a  con- 
siderable number  of  privately  owned  English 
ships  which  came  to  Canton.  Through  Forbes's 
connection  with  the  firm  it  also  had  the  manage- 


BEGINNINGS  9 

ment  of  Houqua's  business.  Of  this  combination 
of  advantages  Forbes  had  the  capacity  to  avail 
himself  to  the  utmost.  Instinctively  he  made 
every  situation  yield  up  its  essence  to  the  last 
drop,  and  nothing  in  this  Chinese  experience 
did  he  allow  to  lie  useless  in  later  years.  The 
business  ties  formed  with  Baring  Brothers  lasted 
for  a  lifetime;  his  understanding  of  Chinese 
character  not  only  served  himself,  but  was  more 
than  once  put  at  the  disposal  —  and  in  no  dilet- 
tante fashion,  either  —  of  uninstructed  state 
officials  at  AYashington.  And  so  it  was  in  respect 
to  everything  that  came  within  the  range  of  his 
apprehending  brain  and  will. 

One  matter  here  deserves  special  mention,  be- 
cause Forbes  later  built  it  so  completely  into  the 
structure  of  his  social  life.  During  his  first  stay 
in  China,  in  the  dearth  of  other  forms  of  recrea- 
tion, he  took  to  the  river  and  soon  made  of  him- 
self a  skilful  yachtsman.  During  his  second  stay, 
when  there  were  more  Englishmen  in  the  place, 
a  club  was  formed  and  out-door  sports  were  in- 
troduced. Forbes,  accustomed  to  the  prevaiUng 
American  fashion  of  keeping  up  dignity  "  by  a 
grave  demeanor  and  consequential  deportment," 
was  astounded  to  see  English  judges  and  high 
officials  of  the  East  India  Company  playing 
cricket  and  leap-frog.  "They  esteem  nothing 
childish  which  gives  zest  to  exercise."  He  was 


10  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

near  enough  to  his  own  Round  Hill  days  to  rel- 
ish this  revelation,  particularly  when  "  the  East 
India  Company,  instead  of  getting  over  Russell 
Sturgis's  back,  stuck  fast,  and  both  rolled  to- 
gether down  the  hill  into  an  empty  tomb"  ;  and 
with  the  enterprise  of  a  true  Yankee  boy  he  was 
soon  organizing  boat-races  and  instructing  the 
English  in  base-ball. 

In  December,  1836,  having  faithfully  com- 
pleted his  term  of  active  partnership  and  made 
arrano^ements  for  a  moderate  share  in  Russell  and 
Company's  profits,  in  return  for  attending  to 
their  interests  in  the  United  States,  having  also 
discharged  his  numerous  social  obligations  by 
giving  a  fancy-dress  ball,  Forbes  left  China  for 
good,  making  a  quick  run  to  New  York  in  one 
hundred  and  twenty  days.  ^^  The  next  forenoon," 
he  writes,  "found  me  snugly  harbored  at  my 
aunt  James  Perkins's  in  Pearl  Street,  where  my 
wife  .  .  .  met  me  after  an  absence  of  a  little 
over  three  years." 

John  M.  Forbes,  twenty-four  years  of  age,  es- 
tablished in  Boston  as  a  merchant  who  had  already 
proved  his  energy  and  prudence  by  accumulating 
a  good  fortune,  was  a  remarkable  man  in  remark- 
able circumstances  and  destined  for  a  remarkable 
career.  The  faculty  of  making  money  was  the 
least  noteworthy  of  his  powers.  By  inheritance 
the  best  traditions  of  the  best  Boston  families  were 


BEGINNINGS  11 

his;  yet  the  narrow  means  in  the  midst  of  which 
he  had  grown  up  kept  him  from  the  inertness 
which  comfort  brings.  Thus  he  had  learned  to 
accept  ungrudgingly  the  necessities  of  hard  work, 
and  at  the  same  time  he  valued  and  was  able  to 
obtain  the  ease  and  stimulus  that  social  inter- 
course of  the  best  sort  can  give.  By  reason  of 
his  clear  head  and  self-control  he  paid  no  toll  to 
the  passions  that  delay  and  burden  youth.  Yet 
he  was  highly  charged  with  feeling,  which  was 
never  mere  emotionalism  but  always  an  impulse 
to  action.  Whatever  was  fine  in  man,  woman,  or 
child,  awakened  his  enthusiasm  and  stirred  him 
to  some  deed  of  recognition ;  thus  there  was  an 
endless  outpouring  of  generosity  from  his  purse. 
So,  too,  whatever  was  mean  or  untrue  roused  his 
wrath  and  the  desire  to  punish  or  crush,  and  the 
check  which  he  put  upon  his  feelings  made  their 
every  manifestation  full  of  significance.  When 
his  anger  at  last  broke  forth  it  was  volcanic  in 
force,  and  as  relentless  as  the  lava  stream.  He 
loved  intense  and  exciting  work,  and  loved  it  best 
of  all  when  it  was  devoted  to  some  form  of  pub- 
lic utility  through  w^hich  he  could  fulfil  his  duty 
to  his  country  and  to  his  fellow  men. 

Those  who  saw  the  operation  of  this  energy 
wondered  at  the  continuing  vitality  of  the  man. 
An  illness  that  his  wife  called  his  "box  fever" 
shows  how  close  he  ran  to  the  wind.  He  had 


12  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

brought  it  on  by  overwork  in  loading  a  small 
barque  and  in  getting  her  to  sea  in  a  hurry,  and 
in  his  delirium  his  mind  ran  on  the  necessity  of 
finding  small  boxes  to  fill  up  the  chinks  under 
her  decks.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  this 
was  his  characteristic  way  of  working  and  that 
he  suffered  from  bronchial  weakness,  he  main- 
tained his  health  marvellously.  The  foundation 
laid  at  the  Round  Hill  School  was  strong,  and 
in  China  he  had  acquired  the  habit  of  daily  ex- 
ercise. This  was  supplemented  by  periods  of  real 
recreation,  when  he  plunged  into  play  with  the 
same  vigor  with  which  he  plunged  into  business, 
emerging  refreshed  where  many  a  man  would 
have  come  out  exhausted. 

As  Forbes  had  learned  from  his  English  com- 
panions at  Canton,  the  best  play  is  out-door  act- 
ivity in  good  company.  To  this  end  his  social 
life  was  arranged.  For  the  first  fifteen  years  or 
so  after  his  return  from  China  he  lived  in  a  cot- 
tage on  Milton  Hill,  six  miles  from  Boston,  where 
the  outlook  on  one  side  is  over  the  Neponset 
marshes  to  the  harbor,  and  on  the  other  side  toward 
Blue  Hill.  Then  he  moved  to  a  larger  house 
close  at  hand,  in  a  still  more  commanding  situa- 
tion. He  never  had  a  house  in  town.  In  1843, 
he  purchased,  jointly  with  his  wife's  uncle,  W. 
W.  Swain,  the  island  of  Naushon,  at  the  entrance 
to  Buzzard's  Bay,  and  in  1857  acquired  full  pos- 


BEGINNINGS  13 

session  of  it.  In  these  two  places  he  and  his 
wife  exercised  a  hospitality  expressive  of  their 
ideal  of  simple,  wholesome  living  and  so  ordered 
that  it  revealed  at  their  best  both  guests  and 
hosts. 

Into  this  atmosphere  pervaded  with  the  reali- 
ties of  life  Forbes's  six  children  were  born.  Al- 
though, as  a  busy  man,  the  time  which  he  had 
for  companionship  with  them  was  limited,  he  en- 
tertained characteristically  definite  ideas  concern- 
ing their  bringing-up.  He  saw  that  he  could  give 
them  every  advantage  which  had  been  his  own 
except  that  of  poverty,  and  he  did  his  best  to 
circumvent  the  consequences  of  this  one  defect. 
His  careful  thouofht  for  their  welfare  is  shown 
in  the  directions  about  their  education  which  he 
wrote  out  for  their  guardians  in  case  he  and  his 
wife  should  die  while  the  children  were  still 
young.  The  document  is  full  of  his  far-sighted- 
ness and  strong  feeling,  as  the  following  extracts 
will  show. 

"  If  possible,  I  should  prefer  Milton  Hill  for 
their  residence,  because  it  is  healthy,  and  secondly 
because,  with  their  rich  circle  of  acquaintance 
in  Boston,  and  with  their  probable  wealth,  they 
would,  if  in  the  city,  be  liable  to  get  injurious 
ideas  of  their  own  consequence,  and  their  own 
duties.  ...  I  would  by  no  means  w4sh  them  kept 


14  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

from  other  young  people,  but  I  would  like  to 
have  their  circle  formed  among  families  of  mod- 
erate means  where  children  are  being  brought 
up  to  labor,  and  not  among  the  rich  alone.  .  .  . 
"  Their  physical  education  is  of  immense  im- 
portance; a  simple  diet  and  a  habit  of  looking 
upon  a  great  deal  of  daily  exercise  in  the  open  air 
as  of  equal  importance  with  good  food  and  cloth- 
ing, form  the  staples  of  my  plan  in  this  respect. 
In  regard  to  their  moral  and  mental  culture,  our 
leading  ideas  would  be  to  try  to  give  them  happy 
views  of  religion,  and  of  life  and  death ;  also  in 
all  of  them  a  habit  of  feeling  that  it  is  their  duty 
to  be  useful  to  their  fellow  creatures,  and  in  or- 
der to  be  able  to  do  this,  to  improve  their  time 
by  acquiring  habits  of  industry  and  application. 
As  to  accomplishments,  and  to  learning  generally, 
I  consider  them  entirely  secondary  to  the  above 
great  leading  ideas.  As  to  their  fortune,  if  they 
have  common  sense,  they  will  with  the  help  of 
judicious  friends  soon  learn  that  it  is  not  theirs 
to  enable  them  to  roll  in  luxury  and  self-indul- 
gence, but  rather  a  trust  to  be  judiciously  used 
to  assist  their  other  efforts  in  doing  good.  Such 
is  my  theory  and  my  belief.  God  help  me,  for 
my  weakness  in  practice,  which  (as  a  warning  I 
here  say  it)  I  attribute  mainly  to  my  want  of 
habits  of  industry.  ..." 


BEGINNINGS  15 

Another  extract  is  from  a  second  letter  of  in- 
structions written  some  years  later,  when  his  old- 
est children  were  nearing  maturity. 

"I  wish  them  to  see  and  know  their  fellow 
creatures,  but  would  especially  have  them  avoid 
Boarding  Schools  and  fashionable  watering-places 
and  resorts.  I  would  have  their  home  made  cheer- 
ful and  attractive  by  trying  to  have  the  best  sort 
of  people  attracted  there. 

"  For  this  I  would  trust  more  to  books,  pic- 
tures, music,  and  the  sympathy  which  a  nucleus 
of  cultivated  society  always  exerts  to  draw  others 
to  it,  rather  than  by  fine  dinners  and  entertain- 
ments and  shows,  fashionable  bails  and  parties. 
The  natural  beauties  of  their  two  homes,  if  these 
can  be  kept,  will,  I  hope,  help  to  draw  around 
them  better  people  than  epicures  and  fashion- 
ables." 

Firm  in  his  own  beliefs  though  Forbes  was, 
even  to  the  point  of  prejudice,  he  was  utterly 
without  that  tendency  to  magnify  himself  which 
so  often  accompanies  such  firmness.  In  truth,  to 
think  of  himself  in  any  light,  except  now  and 
then  for  humorous  purposes,  was  foreign  and 
abhorrent  to  his  nature.  Thus  there  was  found 
in  him  the  paradoxical  combination  of  strong 
will  and  dominating  personality,  with  deference 
to  others  and  genuine  democratic  sympathy.  Of 


16  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

impatient  men,  declared  one  who  knew  him  well, 
he  was  the  most  patient.  With  a  whole-hearted 
belief  in  the  plain  people,  he  was  singularly  fit- 
ted for  leadership  in  a  democratic  community. 

These  were  the  qualities  that  drew  Emerson 
to  him  and  supplied  the  material  for  a  familiar 
passage  in  "Letters  and  Social  Aims." 

"  Never  was  such  force,  good  meaning,  good 
sense,  good  action,  combined  with  such  domestic 
lovely  behavior,  such  modesty  and  persistent  pre- 
ference for  others.  Wherever  he  moved  he  was 
the  benefactor.  It  is  of  course  that  he  should  ride 
well,  shoot  well,  sail  well,  keep  house  well,  ad- 
minister affairs  well ;  but  he  was  the  best  talker, 
also,  in  the  company ;  what  with  a  perpetual  prac- 
tical wisdom,  with  an  eye  always  to  the  working 
of  the  thing,  what  with  the  multitude  and  dis- 
tinction of  his  facts  (and  one  detected  continually 
that  he  had  a  hand  in  everything  that  has  been 
done),  and  in  the  temperance  with  which  he  par- 
ried all  offence  and  opened  the  eyes  of  the  person 
he  talked  with  without  contradicting  him.  Yet 
I  said  to  myself,  How  little  this  man  suspects, 
with  his  sympathy  for  men  and  his  respect  for 
lettered  and  scientific  people,  that  he  is  not  likely, 
in  any  company,  to  meet  a  man  superior  to  him- 
self. And  I  think  this  is  a  good  country  that  can 
bear  such  a  creature  as  he  is."  ^ 

1  Letters  and  Social  AimSf  Riverside  Edition,  p.  103. 


CHAPTER  n 

THE   BUILDING    OF   THE    MICHIGAN    CENTRAL 

RAILROAD 


IN  the  spring  of  the  year  1842,  Charles  Dick- 
ens, being  then  in  the  course  of  his  Ameri- 
can travels,  hired  a  four-horse  stage-coach  to  carry 
him  from  Columbus,  Ohio,  north  to  Tif&n,  where 
he  expected  to  take  the  railroad  for  Sandusky. 
His  description  of  the  journey  epitomizes  the  dif- 
ficulties of  travel  by  land  in  the  Middle  West  of 
those  days. 

"At  one  time  we  were  all  flunof  togfether  in  a 
heap  at  the  bottom  of  the  coach,  and  at  another 
we  were  crushing  our  heads  against  the  roof. 
Now,  one  side  was  down  deep  in  the  mire,  and 
we  were  holding  on  to  the  other.  Now,  the  coach 
was  lying  on  the  tails  of  the  two  wheelers ;  and 
now  it  was  rearing  up  in  the  air,  in  a  frantic  state, 
with  all  four  horses  standing  on  the  top  of  an 
insurmountable  eminence,  looking  coolly  back  at 
it,  as  though  they  would  say,  '  Unharness  us.  It 
can't  be  done.'  The  drivers  on  these  roads,  who 
certainly  get  over  the  ground  in  a  manner  which 


18  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

is  quite  miraculous,  so  twist  and  turn  the  team 
about  in  forcing  a  passage,  corkscrew  fashion, 
through  the  bogs  and  swamps,  that  it  was  quite  a 
common  circumstance  on  looking  out  of  the  win- 
dow, to  see  the  coachman  with  the  ends  of  a  pair 
of  reins  in  his  hands,  apparently  driving  nothing, 
or  playing  at  horses,  and  the  leaders  staring  at 
one  unexpectedly  from  the  back  of  the  coach,  as 
if  they  had  some  idea  of  getting  up  behind.  A 
great  portion  of  the  way  was  over  what  is  called 
a  corduroy  road,  which  is  made  by  throwing 
trunks  of  trees  into  a  marsh,  and  leaving  them 
to  settle  there.  The  very  slightest  of  the  jolts 
with  which  the  ponderous  carriage  fell  from  log 
to  log,  was  enough,  it  seemed,  to  have  dislocated 
all  the  bones  in  the  human  body.  It  would  be  im- 
possible to  experience  a  similar  set  of  sensations 
in  any  other  circumstances,  unless,  perhaps,  in 
attempting  to  go  up  to  the  top  of  St.  PauFs  in 
an  omnibus.  Never,  never  once  that  day  was  the 
coach  in  any  position,  attitude,  or  kind  of  motion 
to  which  we  are  accustomed  in  coaches.  Never 
did  it  make  the  slightest  approach  to  one's  expe- 
rience of  the  proceedings  of  any  sort  of  vehicle 
that  goes  on  wheels."  ^ 

This  description  of  the  roads  of  Ohio,  touched 
with  caricature  though  it  is,  discloses  the  reason 
why  the  development  of  the  Middle  West  waited 

^  American  Notes,  chap.  xiv. 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         19 

for  the  day  of  railroad  transportation.  Commerce 
could  creep  along  its  borders,  —  the  Great  Lakes 
on  the  north,  the  Ohio  on  the  south,  the  Missis- 
sippi on  the  west;  but  the  richness  and  stickiness 
of  the  soil  which  could  produce  such  wonderful 
crops  made  the  business  of  raising  them  hopelessly 
unprofitable,  for  the  cost  and  the  difSculties  of 
getting  them  to  market  were  almost  prohibitive. 
An  old  resident  of  Galesburg,  Illinois,  thus  de- 
scribes conditions  at  this  time  :  — 

'^  Money  was  scarce  beyond  conception.  Values 
for  farm  products  were  very  low :  corn  sold  at 
eight  cents  per  bushel  and  dressed  pork  at  $1.50 
per  hundred ;  everything  was  hauled  thirty  to 
fifty  miles  to  market.  Hogs  raised  near  Galesburg 
were  driven  to  Warsaw,  packed  there  and  shipped 
by  water  to  New  York.  The  land  was  almost  val- 
ueless. My  father  entered  large  amounts  of  Gov- 
ernment land,  with  warrants,  in  1852,  at  eighty 
cents  per  acre,  within  twenty  miles  of  Gales- 
burg."^ 

It  is  easy  to  give  other  examples.  "  Many  in- 
stances are  recorded  of  five  dollars  a  barrel  being 
paid  for  hauling  flour  from  Milwaukee  to  Madi- 
son [eighty-two  miles],  and  it  is  little  wonder, 
when  two  yoke  of  cattle  were  required  for  mov- 
ing ten  to  twelve  hundred  weight  of  goods.  Be- 

^  Some  Features  in  the  History  of  the  Burlington  Road,  by  W. 
W.  Baldwin,  p.  27. 


20  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

fore  the  road  .  .  .  was  laid  out  each  teamster 
went  where  he  pleased,  and  he  usually  tried  a 
new  route,  knowing  that  a  change  must  necessa- 
rily be  an  improvement."^ 

"  It  should  not  be  forgotten,"  said  the  Ohio 
Canal  Commissioners  in  their  report  for  1833, 
"  that  at  this  time  wheat  was  selling  at  from 
twenty  to  thirty  cents  per  bushel,  and  corn  at  from 
ten  to  twelve  and  a  half,  and  in  many  instances 
at  prices  even  lower  than  these ;  and  while  the 
farmer  could,  with  difficulty,  raise  money  to  pay 
his  taxes,  produce  of  his  farm  was  literally  rot- 
ting in  his  yard  from  want  of  a  market."^  More- 
over this  lack  of  transportation,  which  often 
drove  the  farmers  to  the  expedient  of  burning 
their  corn,  kept  them  from  supplying  themselves 
with  salt,  glass,  nails,  axes,  ploughs,  and  other 
such  necessaries.  Under  their  double  privation 
it  is.  not  strange  that  their  progress  towards 
prosperity  was  slow. 

These  obstacles,  however,  only  put  the  pioneer 
spirit  of  the  inhabitants  to  higher  proof.  In 
emulation  of  the  successful  policy  of  the  State 
of  New  York,  they  endeavored  to  connect  by 
canals  the  streams  flowing  into  the  Lakes  and  the 
streams  flowing  into  the  Ohio  and  the  Missis- 
sippi. These  inland  waterways,  however,  though 

^  History  of  Agriculture  in,  Dane  County  (Wis.),  p.  116. 
*  Quarterly  Journal  of  Economics^  November,  1902,  p.  123. 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         21 

they  reduced  astonishingly  the  cost  of  transport- 
ation, were  far  from  meeting  all  the  needs  of  the 
situation,  for  besides  being  frozen  in  winter  they 
were  likely  to  be  dry  in  summer.  On  land  the  one 
sure  means  of  communication  was  the  Cumber- 
land Road,  or  National  Pike,  finally  completed 
in  1838,  which  ran  from  the  East  through 
Wheeling,  Columbus,  Indianapolis,  and  Terra 
Haute,  to  Vandalia,  Illinois.  From  this  a  few 
well-built  branch  roads  extended  to  important 
places  on  the  Lakes  or  the  Ohio,  over  one  of 
which,  that  running  from  Cincinnati  to  Colum- 
bus, Dickens  sped  in  a  coach  at  the  rate  of  six 
miles  an  hour.  Such  meagre  lines  of  communica- 
tion, however,  were  far  from  meeting  the  needs 
of  this  vast  region,  and  it  was  only  with  the 
coming  of  the  steam  railroad  that  the  Western 
pioneers  saw  the  day  of  their  salvation.  Here  at 
last  was  a  means  of  transportation  which,  being 
unaffected  by  rain  or  drought,  was  both  rapid 
and  reliable;  through  it  the  development  of  the 
inert  regions  of  the  interior  should  be  speedy. 

Since  the  inhabitants  of  the  states  to  be  served 
by  these  roads,  canals,  and  railroads  were  them- 
selves absolutely  without  financial  resources  and 
in  their  ignorance  looked  upon  the  ways  of 
finance  as  a  mystery  full  of  golden  promise,  they 
naturally  sought  to  raise  the  money  required  by 
pledging  the  credit  of  the  state.    In  this  rosy 


22  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

belief  they  received  delusive  encouragement,  for 
not  only  Eastern  but  also  English  capital,  trust- 
ing to  the  guarantee  of  the  state,  bought  readily 
the  bonds  and  "  internal-improvement  warrants  " 
of  Indiana,  Ohio,  Michigan,  and  Illinois.^  Indeed, 
up  to  the  year  1838  these  four  states  had  been 
able  to  borrow  for  such  purposes  no  less  than 
$30,000,000.2 

When  the  crisis  of  1837  brought  everything 
to  a  standstill,  the  inhabitants  of  the  Middle  West 
paid  the  full  penalty  for  this  over-confidence 
and  ignorance.  Not  only  was  the  completion  of 
eagerly  awaited  canals  and  railroads  indefinitely 
postponed,  but  the  money  needed  by  the  state 
to  pay  the  interest  on  its  bonds  could  not  be 
obtained.  Its  credit  was  gone ;  to  raise  money  by 
increased  taxation  was  out  of  the  question,  for 

^  "  The  whole  period  from  1815  to  1840  [in  England]  was  .  .  . 
one  in  which  the  pressure  of  surplus  capital  was  felt  with  great 
intensity  ;  .  .  .  Moreover,  the  enterprises  for  which  capital  was 
required  in  America  were  favorably  regarded  by  the  English 
public  .  .  .  American  Canals  .  .  .  did  not  seem  at  all  visionary 
enterprises,  and  the  financial  success  of  the  early  ones  created 
great  confidence  in  them.  .  .  .  More  and  more,  therefore,  her 
capitalists  after  1815  turned  to  this  country;  and  by  1830  they 
seemed  ready  to  supply  us  with  all  the  capital  necessary  to  com- 
plete our  system  of  canals  and  railways,  as  well  as  to  assist  in  the 
development  of  our  agriculture."  —  "The  Early  Transportation 
and  Banking  Enterprises  of  the  States  in  Relation  to  the  Growth 
of  Corporations"  ;  G.  S.  Callender,  in  the  Quarterly  Journal  of 
Economics,  November,  1902,  pp.  142,  143. 

2  Bogart's  Economic  History  of  the  United  States,  p.  195. 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         23 

the  people  had  no  money.  To  the  agricultural 
legislators  in  their  wrath  and  desperation,  repudia- 
tion of  state  obligations  in  one  form  or  another 
seemed  a  clever  act  of  reprisal  for  the  disaster 
which  unholy  finance  had  brought  upon  them. 
Then,  having  repudiated  their  debts  and  thus 
outraged  the  only  people  who  could  come  to  their 
relief,  they  sat  down  and  lamented  their  unhappy 
plight.  In  this  state  Dickens  found  them  in  1842 ; 
and  when  in  ^^  Martin  Chuzzlewit"  he  satirized 
their  malarial  Edens  and  their  hatred  of  every- 
thins:  British,  their  outcries  ag^ainst  him  were  but 
the  sign  that  the  galled  jade  winced. 

What  happened  in  Michigan  was  typical  of  the 
whole  Western  situation.  In  the  early  days  of  its 
statehood  it  had  planned  and  partly  built  two 
lines  of  railroad  across  its  lower  peninsula,  from 
east  to  west.  So  severely,  however,  was  the  state 
shaken  by  the  panic  that  in  spite  of  its  heroic 
efforts  to  meet  its  obligations  the  word  Michigan 
became  a  scarecrow  to  Eastern  capital.  As  the 
years  went  on  and  there  proved  to  be  no  possi- 
bility of  completing  the  roads  or  even  of  procur- 
ing the  money  necessary  to  keep  them  in  repair, 
it  grew  plain  that  the  state  must  get  rid  of  them. 
One,  the  Michigan  Central,  one  hundred  and  forty- 
five  miles  long,  ran  from  Detroit  to  Kalamazoo. 
The  other,  the  Michigan  Southern,  also  ran  no- 
where, but  achieved  the  same  result  with  less 


24  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

effort,  being  only  seventy-five  miles  long.  The 
roads  together  had  cost  $3,500,000.  Accord- 
ingly, placing  its  dilapidated  property  on  the  bar- 
gain-counter, the  state  waited  for  customers. 

At  last,  in  1845,  the  railroads  attracted  the 
attention  of  two  young  men,  both  Easterners  who 
had  gone  West,  and  both  persuaded  not  only  that 
the  day  of  prosperity  for  the  West  was  about  to 
dawn,  but  that,  if  the  right  means  were  taken, 
Eastern  capital  could  be  brought  to  look  upon  a 
Western  road  with  favor.  One  of  the  men  was 
James  F.  Joy,  a  graduate  of  Dartmouth  College 
and  the  Harvard  Law  School,  who  had  come  to 
Detroit  and  was  waiting  for  his  practice  to  grow. 
The  other  was  John  W.  Brooks,  the  superin- 
tendent of  the  Auburn  and  Rochester  Railroad  in 
New  York.  They  believed  that  if  the  Michigan 
Central  could  be  rehabilitated  and  completed 
for  the  remaining  third  of  the  distance  to  Lake 
Michigan,  it  would  prove  a  profitable  investment. 
It  would  open  up  the  rich  farming  land  of  Mich- 
igan ;  better  still,  it  would  constitute  a  link  in 
the  shortest  route  from  the  East  to  Chicago  and 
the  Mississippi  Valley.  At  that  time  the  traveller 
left  the  cars  at  Buffalo,  where  he  took  a  steamer 
which  conveyed  him,  by  the  roundabout  way  of 
Lake  Huron  and  the  Straits  of  Mackinaw,  to  the 
head  of  Lake  Michigan.  If  he  had  good  luck, 
his  boat  reached   Chicago  in  four  days  and  a 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         25 

half;  not  infrequently  six  days  were  needed. 
With  the  railroad  completed  across  Michigan, 
the  time  from  Buffalo  could  be  reduced  to  thirty- 
six  hours.  Of  course,  Brooks  reasoned,  it  was 
conceivable  that  as  years  went  on  a  railroad  might 
be  built  along  the  southern  shore  of  Lake  Erie  to 
Toledo,  and  from  there  to  Chicago ;  but  the  cost 
of  such  an  undertaking  would  be  so  stupendous 
and  the  returns  so  uncertain  that  he  dismissed 
the  possibility  from  his  calculations.  The  Michi- 
gan Central  was,  it  is  true,  a  railroad  in  the  wil- 
derness ;  nevertheless  its  strategic  position  was 
such  that  it  could  hold  its  own  ag^ainst  the  cir- 
cuitous  water  route.  With  Eastern  capital  and 
Eastern  control,  it  was  practically  certain  to  suc- 
ceed. Filled  with  this  conviction  Brooks,  then 
twenty-six  years  old,  set  forth  in  the  winter  of 
1845-46  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  men  of 
means  in  Boston  and  New  York  in  the  hope 
of  interesting  them  in  his  scheme. 

Good  luck  led  Brooks,  in  the  course  of  his 
labors,  to  the  counting-room  of  John  M.  Forbes. 
Forbes  had  already  made  experiments,  most  of 
them  financially  unsuccessful,  in  the  application 
of  steam  to  ocean  transportation ;  ^  but  he  was 

^  For  the  most  part  the  vessels  used  steam  only  as  auxiliary 
power,  having  hinged  propeller-shafts,  by  means  of  which,  in 
good  sailing  weather,  the  propeller  could  be  turned  up  out  of 
harm's  way.  The  Midas,  built  and  owned  by  the  Forbes  bro- 
thers, was  the  first  steamer  to  navigate  Chinese  waters;  the 


26  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

ready  to  listen  to  possibilities  more  promising  in 
connection  with  steam  transportation  on  land. 
In  those  days,  of  course,  there  was  nowhere  any 
expert  knowledge  of  railroading ;  yet,  judged 
even  by  the  standards  of  that  time,  his  notions 
of  the  problems  of  railroad  management  were, 
as  he  took  delight  in  recalling  in  later  years, 
naively  rudimentary.  He  reasoned,  for  example, 
that  in  all  probability  the  presidency  of  a  rail- 
road company  was  like  that  of  an  insurance 
company,  —  a  dignified  ofi&ce  which,  at  that 
time,  was  given  to  "  honest  and  reliable  though 
unsuccessful  merchants,"  the  work  being  done 
by  a  secretary.  Such  a  position  he  wished  to 
find  for  his  elder  brother  Bennet,  whose  daring 
and  brilliant  career  as  a  sea  captain  had  not 
proved  the  best  preparation  for  success  in  mer- 
cantile affairs. 

Drawn  on  partly  by  this  fraternal  motive  and 
partly  by  the  fascination  of  the  enterprise  itself, 
Forbes  went  so  far  as  to  employ  Daniel  Webster 
to  draft  a  charter  embodying  the  wisdom  that 
had  been  gleaned  from  Eastern  railroad  expe- 
rience, and  to  send  Brooks  back  to  Michigan  to 
secure  the  passage  of  the  charter  by  the  legisla- 
ture. 

Massachusetts  was  one  of  the  earliest  ocean  steamers  on  the 
Atlantic.  The  Iron  Witch,  an  iron  paddle-wheel  steamer,  de- 
signed for  fast  service  on  the  Hudson,  was  an  expensive  failure. 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         27 

The  discussion  of  this  bill,  with  its  momentous 
consequences  to  the  exhausted  treasury  of  Mich- 
igan, was  naturally  the  chief  event  of  the  legisla- 
tive session  of  1846.  But  so  ignorant  were  both 
the  public  at  large  and  the  legislators  themselves 
concerning  railroad  charters  that  the  point  on 
which  local  interest  centred  was  the  dangler  that 
the  pagan  capitalists  of  the  East  should  attempt 
to  run  trains  "on  the  Sabbath" ;  and  every  day 
petitions  bearing  on  this  point  were  presented. 
When,  however,  the  time  came  for  voting  on 
this  section,  amendments  were  offered  requiring 
that  the  corporation  should  observe  the  other 
nine  commandments  also,  and  that  the  directors 
should  attend  church  at  least  twice  every  Sunday, 
and  the  section  was  laughed  to  defeat.^  The  true 
guardian  of  the  state's  interests  proved  to  be  the 
governor,  Alpheus  Felch,  an  able  and  honest  ex- 
ecutive, who  more  than  once  during  this  session 
had  to  restrain  the  legislature  from  giving  away 
to  corporations  the  property  of  the  people.  Thus 
the  charter  as  passed  retained  for  the  state  a  meas- 
ure of  legislative  supervision  and  control.^  Yet 

1  Journal  of  the  Senate  of  Michigan,  1846,  pp.  274,  275. 

2  By  the  act  of  incorporation  (Laws  of  Michigan,  1846,  pp. 
37-G4)  the  Michigan  Central  Railroad  was  granted  the  property 
of  the  road  forever  ;  but  the  state  might  repurchase  it  after  a 
lapse  of  twenty  years,  and  after  thirty  years  the  legislature 
might  alter,  amend,  or  repeal  the  charter.  For  the  first  four  years 
the  road  was  to  pay  a  tax  of  one-half  of  one  per  cent,  after  that, 


28  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

even  so,  Brooks  and  Joy  knew  that,  witH  the 
price  o£  the  road  fixed  at  $2,000,000,  they  had 
not  the  worst  of  the  bargain. 

Everything  now  depended  on  the  skill  and 
force  of  the  man  who  took  hold  of  the  financier- 
ing. Boston  capital,  which  had  been  principally 
invested  in  the  China  trade,  was  now  beginning 
to  be  put  into  mills  in  Massachusetts  and  New 
Hampshire  and  into  short  lines  of  railroad  along 

of  three-fourtlis  of  one  per  cent  on  the  capital  stock  and  loans 
for  construction  purposes.  Its  annual  report  to  the  secretary  of 
the  state  was  to  contain  tables  shoM'ing  its  financial  condition, 
its  physical  condition,  and  the  amount  and  character  of  its  busi- 
ness. The  amount  of  the  capital  stock  was  set  at  five  million  dol- 
lars, with  permission  to  increase  it  to  eight  million. 

The  rates  existing  under  state  management  were  to  continue 
in  force  until  July  1, 1848,  from  which  time  a  reduction  of  twenty- 
five  per  cent  was  to  be  made  on  flour  and  grain  ;  the  tariff  for 
no  article  was  to  be  higher  than  the  average  of  the  tariffs  charged 
for  that  article  on  the  Boston  and  Lowell,  the  Boston  and  Provi- 
dence, and  the  Boston  and  Worcester  railroads,  during  Septem- 
ber and  October  of  1845.  An  exception  might  be  made  if  the 
secretary  of  state  of  Michigan,  the  auditor,  and  the  attorney- 
general  gave  their  consent.  There  was  provision  for  a  commission 
to  determine  what  was  the  average  rate  on  the  New  England 
railroads,  and  in  case  of  disagreement  a  final  decision  was  to  be 
rendered  by  the  court  of  chancery.  Furthermore,  not  oftener 
than  once  in  ten  years  the  legislature  might  require  such  a  com- 
mission to  review  all  the  rates  of  the  road.  The  road  was  required 
to  "  transport  merchandise  and  property  ....  without  showing 
partiality  or  favor,  and  with  all  practical  despatch."  The  max- 
imum passenger  tariff  was  fixed  at  three  cents  per  mile.  No  pub- 
lication of  rates  was  required  ;  nevertheless,  for  eight  years,  from 
1850  to  1857  inclusive,  these  schedules  were  given  in  the  annual 
report  of  the  railroad. 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         29 

the  Atlantic  coast.  In  New  Bedford,  owing  to 
the  decline  in  profits  from  the  whaling  industry, 
there  was  also  a  considerable  amount  of  capital 
that  might  be  drawn  into  new  projects.  Through 
family  connections  in  these  two  cities  Forbes 
could  make  a  good  beginning,  and  in  New  York 
he  got  a  large  measure  of  help  from  his  former 
partner  in  China,  John  C.  Green.  Moreover,  he 
was  sure  of  aid  from  the  forlorn  holders  of  Mich- 
igan bonds  and  internal-improvement  warrants, 
who  were  only  too  glad  to  jump  from  their  pre- 
sent fire  into  the  frying-pan  of  railroad  stocks. 
As  one  person  after  another  looked  into  the  facts 
about  this  worn-out  railroad  in  the  wilderness, 
it  became  plain  that  it  was,  indeed,  a  bargain. 
Brooks's  report  showed  that  there  had  been  an 
increase  of  one  hundred  per  cent  in  the  receipts 
within  the  past  year,  and  there  was  every  prospect 
of  even  more  satisfactory  returns  when  the  road 
should  be  built  across  the  state  and  properly 
equipped.  Finally,  there  was  the  assurance  that 
it  was  to  be  controlled  by  Eastern  capitalists  of 
proved  honesty  and  ability.  Advantages  such  as 
these  did  not  suffer  when  presented  by  a  man  like 
Forbes,  who  had  vision,  will,  and  above  all  the 
faculty  of  "  pitching  in  ";  and  as  the  six  months 
allowed  for  the  formation  of  the  company  drew 
to  an  end,  his  tense  and  tireless  efforts  brought 
success.  ^'  I  shall,  I  hope,"  he  wrote  when  it  was 


30  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

all  over,  "  have  cause  to  look  back  upon  this  Sep- 
tember as  one  of  the  best  spent  months  of  my 
life."  He  had,  indeed,  opened  the  door  upon  his 
true  career. 

On  September  23, 1846,  the  Michigan  Central 
Railroad  took  possession  of  its  property.  Forbes 
was  president,  having  consented  to  take  the  office 
only  because  he  found  that  otherwise  the  neces- 
sary capital  could  not  be  secured ;  but  he  arranged 
to  put  the  burden  of  his  work  on  the  treasurer, 
George  B.  Upton,  to  whom  he  made  over  his 
salary.  John  W.  Brooks,  at  Detroit,  was  to  have 
charge  of  the  running  of  the  road. 

Promising  as  were  the  prospects  of  the  Michi- 
gan Central,  the  road  itself,  as  Brooks's  report 
made  clear,  was  a  shabby  piece  of  property.  The 
one  hundred  and  forty-five  miles  of  track  from 
Detroit  to  Kalamazoo  were  in  bad  condition,  and 
fifty-six  miles  more  were  needed  to  complete  the 
line  to  the  nearest  point  on  Lake  Michigan.  There 
were  only  four  passenger  "  depots  "  along  the  line, 
and  at  Detroit  nothing  but  a  small  freight  depot 
and  an  engine-house,  both  inconveniently  situ- 
ated at  some  distance  from  the  water  front.  The 
value  of  the  rolling  stock  was  $68,000,  the  larg- 
est single  item  being  $4000  for  a  locomotive  of 
twelve  tons. 

The  track,  like  that  of  all  early  railroads,  con- 
sisted of  beams  of  wood  six  inches  square,  to 


i      it    V     *      * 


1       1     ■> 


^  Railroads  in  Illinois, 

Imliiiiia,  Oliio  and  Mieliigan 

tH  [With  fumieL'tioiistoNew  YorkJ 

at  Hie  end  of  1852 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         31 

which  were  fastened  strips  of  iron  half  an  inch 
thick  by  two  and  a  quarter  inches  wide.  The 
beams  were  fastened  to  cross-ties  laid  three  feet 
apart^  which  in  turn  were  laid  upon  under-sills, 
"  the  whole  being  supported  upon  short  blocks 
of  different  lengths,  varying  according  to  the 
distance  between  the  bottom  of  the  under-sills  and 
a  firm  foundation."  ^  On  the  first  thirty  miles  out 
of  Detroit  the  wooden  part  of  the  track,  which 
had  been  in  use  for  eight  years,  had  never  been 
renewed,  and  was  naturally  much  decayed.  The 
iron,  worn  out  and  broken,  curved  up  at  the 
ends;  and  when  one  of  these  up-springing  pieces 
thrust  itself  through  the  floor  of  the  car  between 
the  feet  of  a  passenger,  it  was  expressively  known 
as  a  "  snake-head."  Such  a  form  of  track,  best 
described  by  the  phrase  "  a  barrel-hoop  tacked 
to  a  lath,"  was  already  passing ;  and  the  charter 
of  the  new  company  required  the  road  to  be 
laid  with  a  heavy  H  rail  of  iron,  weighing  sixty 
pounds  a  yard.^ 

When  the  directors  held  their  first  annual 
meeting  at  Detroit  in  June,  1847,  the  road  had 
already  proved  prosperous  enough  to  justify  them 
in  beginning  at  once  to  build  toward  Lake  Michi- 
gan. They  accordingly  sanctioned  expenditures 

1  Brooks's  Report  upon  the  Merits  of  the  Michigan  Central  Rail- 
road as  an  Investment  for  Eastern  Capitalists,  p.  4. 

2  The  present  weight  of  the  heaviest  steel  rails  is  more  than 
one  hundred  pounds  a  yard. 


C.  fc      O     f.  , 


1    Vc* 


f    < 


«  c 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         31 

which  were  fastened  strips  of  iron  half  an  inch 
thick  by  two  and  a  quarter  inches  wide.  The 
beams  were  fastened  to  cross-ties  laid  three  feet 
apart,  which  in  turn  were  laid  upon  under-sills, 
"  the  whole  being  supported  upon  short  blocks 
of  different  lengths,  varying  according  to  the 
distance  between  the  bottom  of  the  undei*-sills  and 
a  firm  foundation."  ^  On  the  first  thirty  miles  out 
of  Detroit  the  wooden  part  of  the  track,  which 
had  been  in  use  for  eight  years,  had  never  been 
renewed,  and  was  naturally  much  decayed.  The 
iron,  worn  out  and  broken,  curved  up  at  the 
ends ;  and  when  one  of  these  up-springing  pieces 
thrust  itself  through  the  floor  of  the  car  between 
the  feet  of  a  passenger,  it  was  expressively  known 
as  a  "  snake-head."  Such  a  form  of  track,  best 
described  by  the  phrase  "  a  barrel-hoop  tacked 
to  a  lath,"  was  already  passing ;  and  the  charter 
of  the  new  company  required  the  road  to  be 
laid  with  a  heavy  H  rail  of  iron,  weighing  sixty 
pounds  a  yard.^ 

When  the  directors  held  their  first  annual 
meeting  at  Detroit  in  June,  1847,  the  road  had 
already  proved  prosperous  enough  to  justify  them 
in  beginning  at  once  to  build  toward  Lake  Michi- 
gan. They  accordingly  sanctioned  expenditures 

1  Brooks's  Report  upon  the  Merits  of  the  Michigan  Central  Rail- 
road as  an  Investment  for  Eastern  Capitalists,  p.  4. 

2  The  present  weight  of  the  heaviest  steel  rails  is  more  than 
one  hundred  pounds  a  yard. 


32  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

amounting  to  over  two  million  dollars,  which 
should  give  them  a  road  fully  equipped  to  handle 
its  rapidly  growing  business.  The  actual  cost,  it 
may  be  added,  was  more  than  four  million  dol- 
lars. 

It  was  at  the  time  of  this  meeting  that  Forbes 
and  some  of  his  associates  received  their  first 
lesson  in  practical  railroading.  They  travelled  on 
the  road,  explored  so-called  harbors  on  Lake 
Michigan  in  the  search  for  a  western  terminus, 
went  on  to  Chicago,  and  returned  by  steamer 
through  the  Straits  of  Mackinaw.  Forbes,  a  born 
traveller,  with  a  keen  eye  and  a  zest  for  every 
experience,  described  the  trip  in  a  journal  let- 
ter to  his  wife,  which  deserves  a  place  here  for 
the  picture  it  gives  of  the  rawness  of  the  coun- 
try which  the  railroad  was  to  do  so  much  to 
develop. 

Steamer  Empire,  Mackinaw,  June  11,  1847. 

We  reached  Detroit  1.30  in  the  night  and 
landed  in  the  mud,  slept  an  hour  or  two,  and  had 
to  get  up  and  go  to  find  T.  Howe;  Brooks,  our 
mainstay,  having  gone  West.  We  decided  to 
follow,  and  started  at  eight  or  so  on  our  rail- 
road. .  .  . 

For  the  first  few  miles  the  country  was  dreary; 
flat,  with  a  great  deal  of  surface  water,  through 
forests  mostly,  but  dense  and  melancholy  ones, 
water  under  foot  and  huge  decaying  trees  lying 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         33 

about ;  the  trees  generally  tall  and  with  no  foli- 
age until  near  the  top. 

We  found  the  road  in  a  most  deplorable  condi- 
tion, the  iron  broken  up  often  into  pieces  not  a 
foot  long,  and  sometimes  we  could  not  see  any 
iron  for  some  feet,  only  wood ;  in  other  places 
short  pieces  of  iron,  almost  athwartships,  but  our 
protection  was  in  its  being  so  short  that  no  snake- 
heads  could  reach  the  cars.  This  bad  road  lasted 
about  eighty  miles,  the  bad  country  about  thirty, 
when  we  came  to  a  little  drier  soil  and  passed 
throuo'h  several  flourishino^  villao^es. 

Here  we  began  to  see  the  famous  oak  openings, 
—  noble  oak  trees  just  far  enough  apart  to  let 
each  take  its  handsome  natural  shape,  just  as  a 
park  should  be  ;  but,  sad  to  tell,  we  seldom  saw 
the  openings  in  their  beauty,  for  the  trees  had 
generally  been  girdled  and  stood  naked  and  dead 
(some  of  them  dying,  having  been  cut  this  year), 
and  fine  fields  of  wheat  growing  right  up  to  their 
trunks,  and  fields  varying  in  size  from  twenty  to 
two  hundred  acres  each;  but  few  flowers  to  be 
seen,  and  the  houses  far  from  our  New  England 
houses  in  neatness.  At  night  we  reached  a  dirty 
country  tavern  at  Kalamazoo,  where  the  road 
terminates.  .  .  . 

At  K.  we  found  Brooks  was  gone  to  Niles ; 
and  we  resolved  to  follow  him,  and  arranged  to 
start  with  a  barouche  and  four  horses  at  4  a.  m. 
We  sat  up  till  half-past  eleven  talking  with  our 
engineers,  whom  we  sent  for  to  get  information 
from  them  about  our  routes,  and  then  turned  in. 
In  an  hour  Brooks  arrived,  and  came  to  my  room, 


34  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

and  after  one  hour's  talk  we  decided  to  take  him 
with  us  and  push  for  the  celebrated  city  of  St. 
Joseph,  fifty-six  miles  distant,  which  we  accord- 
ingly did  at  4  a.  m.  With  few  exceptions,  our 
ride  was  like  that  of  the  day  before,  the  roads 
execrable,  full  of  deep  holes  and  gullies,  where 
we  had  a  right  to  expect  a  capsize ;  but  the 
weather  was  lovely  beyond  measure,  and  on  the 
whole  we  enjoyed  our  drive,  excepting  that,  not 
daring  to  drink  the  water,  our  tongues  were 
parched  like  fever  patients. 

At  four  we  reached  the  marsh  which  surrounds 
St.  Joseph.  Figure  to  yourself  a  pestilential 
black  mud,  quivering  and  shaking  under  its  own 
weight,  with  tufts  of  grass,  rank  and  uneven,  a 
deep  river  in  the  midst,  and  sand-banks  where 
the  mud  ceases.  .  .  .  Rising  up  from  this  was  a 
steep  but  small  bluff,  extending  into  the  lake,  on 
which  the  city  stands.  Two  handsome  houses 
built  in  1837,  and  I  believe  now  empty,  two  large 
wooden  taverns,  one  now  untenanted,  and  a  few 
other  indifferent  looking  palaces,  with  some  stray 
houses  along  the  river,  complete  the  coup  d^ceil 
of  this  famous  city,  which  sprung  up  in  a  night 
and  withered  next  day.  The  only  pleasant  thing 
was  the  fine  view  of  Lake  Michigan,  blue,  like 
the  ocean,  and  wide. 

We  started  out  to  make  our  observations,  ac- 
companied by  pretty  much  all  the  town,  some 
half-dozen  people,  who  took  care  we  should  not 
be  alone  a  moment  for  fear  we  should  not  ap- 
preciate fully  the  beauties  of  the  place.  We  went 
over  to  Uncle  Sam  Russell's  ^^Eden/'  which  has 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         35 

a  fine  map  of  land  laid  out  into  cities,  and  is 
called  North  St.  Joseph.  Drifting  sand  near  the 
lake  and  the  aforesaid  marsh  in  shore.  Nothing 
would  induce  me  to  visit  this  place  again,  un- 
less I  could  carry  Mr.  Russell  with  me  and  wit- 
ness his  first  interview  with  his  domain. 

June  12. 

.  .  .  We  left  [St.  Joseph]  on  Sunday  A.  M. 
for  Niles,  26  miles,  and  arrived  there  to  dinner; 
the  country  dull  for  12  miles,  then  tolerable.  .  .  . 
We  started  at  7  alons^  the  lake  shore  for  Michisfan 
City ;  a  beautiful  day,  the  lake  just  like  the  ocean, 
plenty  of  deer  tracks.  Got  there  at  11  and  ex- 
amined the  harbor  to  our  satisfaction,  and  at 
2  p.  M.  embarked  in  the  steamer  for  Chicago, 
taking  leave  of  Brooks  who  was  bound  back  to 
Detroit.  Found  Mr.  Ogden  [William  B.  Ogden, 
first  Mayor  of  Chicago]  on  board,  a  very  agree- 
able man  who  came  to  Chicago  12  years  ago, 
when  it  was  a  wilderness,  and  now  there  are  15,- 
000  to  20,000  people  there.  Arrived  at  Chicago 
at  5  p.  M.  —  hotter  than  Tophet.  Established  our- 
selves at  an  immense  hotel,  and  the  pangs  of 
thirst  being  unbearable,  we  here  broke  into  lake 
water  astonishingly,  and  happily  without  bad 
effect.  Mr.  Ogden  came  for  us  at  6  or  7  in  his 
carryall,  and  took  us  to  drive  about  the  town. 
Some  of  the  houses  are  on  a  bluff  (like  that  at 
Brooklyn)  looking  out  on  the  blue  lake,  and  it 
was  lovely  at  sunset  beyond  imagination ;  few 
trees,  however,  and  the  ground  under  foot  damp- 
ish, being  called  "  Wet  Prairie.*'  Mr.  0.  offered 


36  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

to  drive  us  next  day  to  the  ^^  Grand  Prairie,"  20 
miles  distant,  but  the  roads  were  bad,  the  weather 
hot,  and  after  a  week's  train  we  did  not  think  it 
worth  while. 


Ogden's  attentions,  it  soon  appeared,  were  by 
way  of  inducing  the  Eastern  capitalists  to  buy 
land  for  which  he  was  the  agent.  The  "  wet 
prairie,"  within  a  mile  of  the  hotel,  he  offered 
at  $1.25  an  acre.  '^  Sheltered  by  our  absurd  pre- 
judices against  land,"  wrote  Forbes  thirty-five 
years  later,  "we  were  proof  against  Ogden's  se- 
ductions, and  I  do  not  think  any  of  us  ever 
bought  a  foot  of  land  in  Chicago  for  ourselves 
while  the  road  was  in  course  of  construction. 
My  hotel  bill  of  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 
dollars  would  have  bought  one  hundred  acres, 
now  worth  $8,000,000  to  $12,000,000." 

This  rawness  of  the  land  which  the  Michigan 
Central  was  to  serve  was  matched  by  the  inex- 
perience of  the  settlers  in  the  obligations  of  a 
railroad  public.  Having  had  things  pretty  much 
their  own  way  in  the  days  when  the  road  be- 
longed to  the  state,  they  did  not  take  kindly  to 
the  regulations  that  were  necessary  to  put  the 
road  on  a  business  basis.  The  turbulent  element 
which  is  found  in  every  frontier  community,  be- 
ing here  well  organized  and  determined  to  rule 
or  ruin,  precipitated  a  fierce  struggle  which  was 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         37 

the  precursor  of  the  granger  difficulties  of  later 
decades. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  road  the  locomotives 
had  proceeded  with  such  obliging  caution  that 
live-stock  could  browse  between  the  rails  in  en- 
tire safety.  Naturally,  when  under  the  new  man- 
agement the  speed  was  accelerated,  with  the  con- 
sequent destruction  of  cattle,  the  outcry  was  at 
first  great.  But  the  balm  of  damages  easily  ob- 
tained opened  the  eyes  of  the  settlers  to  new  tac- 
tics, and  soon  they  took  their  pigs  to  the  railroad 
track  as  to  a  market.  As  a  counter  move,  when 
the  line  of  track  had  been  properly  fenced  in, 
Brooks  issued  notice  to  the  effect  that  hereafter 
the  road  would  pay  only  one-half  the  value  of 
any  animal  killed.  The  contest  was  then  joined. 
Trains  found  their  progress  blocked  by  logs  on 
the  track,  and  on  grades  the  rails  were  often 
greased,  so  that  the  passengers  had  to  get  out 
and  work  their  passage.  In  his  Reminiscences 
Forbes  tells  the  story  of  the  struggle. 

In  the  country  next  west  of  Detroit  the  law- 
breakers were  so  strong  that  it  was  said  no  judge 
or  jury  dared  to  convict  any  of  the  prominent 
men  among  them;  and  it  v/as  soon  evident  that 
here  was  the  battle-ground  between  order  and 
disorder.  Mr.  Brooks  at  once  took  his  measures 
with  his  characteristic  foresight  and  decision. 
When  almost  powerless,  he  maintained  the  best 


38  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER      . 

truce  possible,  protecting  his  property  and  trade 
by  special  police  raised  from  his  own  men,  and 
usually  running  a  hand  car  ahead  of  every  train, 
as  I  remember  was  still  done  the  first  time  my 
wife  and  I  went  over  the  railroad.  But  Brooks 
laid  his  plans  for  more  thorough  work.  His 
shrewd  lawyer  sent  on  colonists  to  settle  on  the 
line  of  road  in  that  county  as  farmers,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  get  evidence  against  the  conspira- 
tors, who  had  determined  either  to  destroy  or 
control  our  road.  He  also  quietly  took  measures 
to  get  the  legislature  to  change  the  general  law, 
so  that  criminals  could,  when  circumstances  jus- 
tified it,  be  tried  in  counties  other  than  those  in 
which  their  offences  were  committed.  While  thus 
accumulating  evidence  and  getting  ready  for  en- 
forcing his  rights,  he  went  on  extending  and  re- 
building the  road  with  vigor.  The  conspirators 
were  led  by  a  man  named  Fitch,  supposed  to  be 
quite  rich  for  the  country,  who  boasted  that  no 
court  would  give  a  verdict  against  him  or  his 
men.  Misled  perhaps  by  Brooks's  quiet  methods, 
he  extended  his  operations  from  putting  obstruc- 
tion on  the  track  and  firing  upon  trains,  to  burn- 
ing wood-piles  and  depots,  destroying  at  one  fire 
$75,000  worth  of  property.  .  .  . 

When  in  due  time  Mr.  Brooks's  plan  was  ripe, 
he  one  night  sent  out  a  train-load  of  special  of- 
ficers, chiefly  enlisted  among  his  own  men,  and 
captured  [thirty-five]  of  the  conspirators  without 
a  blow  being  struck  or  any  resistance  attempted. 
They  expected  to  be  carried  only  to  their  county 
town,  there  to  be  bailed  out ;  but,  when  they  ap- 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         39 

proached  Detroit,  they  found  for  the  first  time 
that  the  law  had  been  changed,  and  that  they 
could  be  tried  in  a  place  where  justice  was  pos- 
sible. They  hired  William  H.  Seward  to  come 
from  New  York  and  defend  them,  which  he  did 
in  a  speech  worse  than  any  made  by  himself  or 
any  other  demagogue  in  this  country.  The  trial 
lasted  all  summer.  Fitch  and  one  or  two  others 
dying  in  jail,  it  was  said  in  consequence  of  medi- 
cine taken  to  produce  illness  and  prolong  the  trial 
in  hopes  of  a  disagreement  of  the  jury.  Mr. 
Brooks's  measures  for  getting  evidence  and  work- 
ing up  his  case  were  so  good  that  in  spite  of 
Seward's  help  and  of  all  the  disadvantages  of  a 
great  corporation  prosecuting  individuals  and 
farmers,  all  the  worst  members  of  the  g:sincr  were 
.  .  .  convicted.  ...  It  was  the  great  railroad 
trial  of  this  century,  and  settled  many  practical 
questions  for  all  Mr.  Brooks's  successors  in  rail- 
road building  and  management. 

In  the  operation  of  the  road.  Brooks,  as  this 
episode  makes  clear,  was  the  guiding  spirit.  Be- 
sides being  an  experienced  engineer,  he  was  an 
executive  full  of  energy  and  resource.  For  very 
little  of  what  he  was  called  upon  to  do  was  there 
any  precedent;  conditions  were  so  exceptional 
that  his  inventive  genius  was  heavily  drawn  upon. 
It  was,  in  fact,  a  typical  instance  of  the  way  in 
which  mother  wit  and  Yankee  ingenuity  can  save 
a  situation  and  establish  order  out  of  chaos. 


40  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

Such  success  as  Brooks  achieved  in  his  own 
department,  however,  would  have  been  impossible 
if  the  financial  management  of  the  road  also  had 
not  been  masterly.  The  older  railroads  in  the 
East  yielded  every  six  months  a  wreckage  of  em- 
barrassments and  disasters,  all  due  to  the  mental 
or  moral  incompetence  of  the  men  who  undertook 
to  guide  them  through  the  uncharted  waters  of 
railroad  finance.  To  find  and  to  keep  the  chan- 
nel under  such  circumstances  required  a  remark- 
able measure  of  alertness,  faith,  and  courage. 
Railroading  is  preeminently  an  enterprise  in 
which  men  must  think  in  decades  and  scores  of 
years ;  yet  at  this  time  the  oldest  road  in  Massa- 
chusetts had  been  running  barely  fifteen  years. 
So  it  was  that,  in  these  hobble-de-hoy  days  of 
railroads,  the  Michigan  Central  owed  no  little  of 
its  brilliant  success  to  the  fact  that  its  financial 
affairs  were  guided  by  a  man  so  sound  and  reso- 
lute as  John  M.  Forbes. 

In  the  first  three  years  of  Forbes's  presidency 
more  than  $6,000,000  were  required  for  the  pur- 
chase, construction,  and  equipment  of  the  road. 
It  was  his  business  to  secure  this  money,  and  the 
limits  within  which  he  could  work  were  narrow 
enough.  "With  Baring  Brothers  and  with  bankers 
in  Europe,  it  is  true,  he  was  in  close  touch  through 
his  ventures  in  the  China  trade,  and  to  such  men 
he  was  constantly  expressing  the  hope  that  the 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         41 

high  rates  of  interest  prevailing  in  the  United 
States  might  prove  more  tempting  than  the  three 
or  four  per  cent  they  could  get  at  home.  "You 
are  probably  aware/'  he  wrote  in  March,  1849, 
to  a  merchant  in  Hamburg,  "  that  for  18  months 
past  the  best  paper,  such  as  that,  for  instance, 
of  my  good  uncle,  T.  H.  Perkins,  Esq.,  with 
other  names  on  the  notes,  has  been  selling  here 
at  from  10  to  18  %  per  annum."  But  foreign 
bankers,  making  no  distinction  between  enter- 
prises backed  by  poor  and  irresponsible  Western 
states,  and  those  financed  by  reliable  Eastern 
merchants,  were  proof  against  his  allurements; 
and  in  these  first  years,  except  for  one  small 
loan  obtained  at  the  very  beginning,  not  a  cent 
of  foreign  capital  went  into  the  Michigan  Cen- 
tral Railroad.  On  the  other  hand,  the  continuing 
decHne  of  the  China  trade  and  the  whaling  in- 
dustry in  New  England  was  an  opportunity  of 
which  Forbes  made  the  most.  By  his  persistent 
and  persuasive  application  to  his  friends,  and  by 
the  action  of  the  directors  in  applying  to  con- 
struction the  eight  percent  dividend  of  $176,000, 
earned  in  1848,  and  issuing  a  dividend  of  stock, 
the  cash  needed  to  complete  the  road  was  raised. 
Thus,  thanks  to  the  faith  and  works  of  Brooks 
and  Forbes,  when,  in  the  spring  of  1819,  the 
line  was  completed  from  Detroit  to  New  Buffalo 
on  Lake  Michigan,  the  stockholders  had  every 


42  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

reason  to  be  satisfied  with  their  investment.  Not 
only  was  the  road  well  constructed:  it  was  ade- 
quate in  its  provisions  for  increase  of  traffic. 
Moreover,  the  company  had  built  the  Mayflower, 
one  of  the  largest  and  fastest  steamers  in  the 
country,  to  run  between  Buffalo  and  Detroit, 
and  thus  it  controlled  the  only  quick  route  to 
the  West.  With  the  assurance  of  a  large  amount 
of  through  traffic  to  be  added  to  its  already  profit- 
able and  rapidly  growing  business,  the  road  pro- 
mised to  become  without  further  delay  a  highly 
remunerative  investment.  Forbes  and  Brooks,  to 
be  sure,  perceived  that  their  very  success,  taken 
with  the  quickened  development  of  the  West, 
was  bringing  the  danger  of  competition  nearer 
and  nearer.  They  could  not  expect  to  keep  their 
advantajxe  much  lonorer  to  themselves.  But  the 
conservative  majority  looked  upon  any  such  pos- 
sibility as  chimerical;  and  the  directors,  confident 
that  the  road  would  never  need  to  go  beyond 
the  western  boundary  of  the  state,  even  rejected 
a  chance  to  obtain  for  a  song  a  railroad  charter 
which  had  been  granted  by  the  Indiana  legisla- 
ture. They  had  made  their  investment;  the  rail- 
road was  finished;  they  now  wanted  the  profits 
to  come  in. 

II 

Within   a   year,  however,   these  illusions  of 
security  were  dispelled.    A  group  of  New  York 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         43 

capitalists  bought  the  Michigan  Southern,  the 
straggling  zigzag  bit  of  line,  once  the  property 
of  the  state,  which  has  already  been  mentioned, 
snapped  up  the  Indiana  charter  which  the  Michi- 
gan Central  had  rejected,  and  prepared  to  build  a 
cheap  railroad  from  Toledo  to  Chicago.  At  the 
same  time  it  became  apparent  to  the  most  conserva- 
tive minds  that  the  construction  of  a  railroad  along 
the  southern  shore  of  Lake  Erie  was  only  a  few 
years  distant.  If  the  Michigan  Central  were  not 
to  become  an  isolated  piece  of  road,  picking  up 
what  business  it  could  between  its  two  lake  ter- 
minals, it  must  extend  its  influence  both  east  and 
west.  Its  owners  must,  in  fact,  double  their  in- 
vestment if  they  were  to  save  what  they  had  al- 
ready put  in. 

Amono:  the  causes  that  accounted  for  the 
extraordinary  development  of  the  period  upon 
which  the  Middle  West  was  just  entering  were 
such  obvious  ones  as  the  steady  increase  of  the 
population,  particularly  after  1848,  by  immigra- 
tion from  Germany,  and  the  general  introduction 
of  the  McCormick  reaper,  which  made  possible 
the  increase  of  the  grain  harvest  twenty  or  thirty 
fold.  Furthermore,  commerce  between  this  region 
and  the  cotton-raisino^  states  had  outOTOwn  the 
capacity  of  the  rivers  and  demanded  a  railroad 
from  the  Lakes  to  the  Gulf.  So  imperative  was 
this  last  need,  that  in  1850  Congress  granted  aid 


U  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

from  tlie  public  lands  along  the  line  of  the  pro- 
posed route.  With  this  magnificent  gift,  the  roads 
that  were  to  compose  the  system  —  the  Illinois 
Central  and  the  Mobile  and  Ohio  —  could  make 
a  successful  appeal  for  capital. 

But  perhaps  the  chief  reason  for  the  rapid 
development  of  these  years,  especially  as  regards 
railroads,  was  the  call  of  the  Far  West.  With 
the  discovery  of  gold  in  California  in  1849,  the 
nation  took  a  continental  view  of  itself.  Its  first 
thought  was  to  abridge  the  journey,  long  and 
wearisome  whether  by  land  or  by  sea,  to  the  Pacific 
coast,  and  every  railroad  in  the  Mississippi  Valley 
entertained  schemes  of  laying  its  track  westward 
over  the  prairies.  "  The  discoveries  of  gold," 
wrote  Forbes  in  1854,  "have  been  the  direct  cause 
of  the  construction  of  four-fifths  of  the  Western 
railways  begun  since  1849.  The  success  of  a  few 
which  had  been  previously  constructed  gave  con- 
fidence, it  is  true,  and  the  West  had  been  fast 
developing ;  but  not  much  faster  than  it  had  been 
in  four  years  previously,  when  hardly  anything 
was  done  in  railways  there.  This  sudden  success 
of  Western  enterprises  was  also  in  the  face  of  the 

failure  or  the  depreciation  of  the  Eastern  rail- 

"  1 
ways. 

By  the  year  1850  Eastern  financiers  were  fully 

awake  to  these  marvellous  opportunities  for  the 

1  February  20,  1854. 


THE  MICHIGAN   CENTRAL  RAILROAD         45 

investment  of  capital.  Their  own  resources  being 
still  inadequate,  they  again  appealed  to  Europe. 
''  As  money  seems  to  be  a  drug  on  your  side," 
wrote  Forbes,  in  May  of  1852,  to  the  merchant  in 
Hamburg  to  whom  three  years  before  he  had 
turned  in  vain,  "  while  we  have  still  use  for  it 
here  at  a  fair  price,  I  cannot  help  repeating  the 
suggestion  which  I  then  made  for  your  consider- 
ation. When  I  see  quotations  on  your  side  and 
on  ours  for  money,  I  feel  just  as  you  would  if  old 
Java  Coffee  were  selling  here  at  four  cents,  and 
a  drug  at  that,  while  fifteen  days  distant  it  was 
worth  eight  cents  in  your  market." 

And  to  Russell  Sturgis  in  London  he  wrote  in 
September,  1851,  concerning  the  prospects  of 
railroad  building  in  Illinois :  "  Imagine  a  deep 
black  soil,  almost  every  acre  of  which  can  be  en- 
tered at  once  with  the  plough,  and  an  enormous 
crop  secured  the  first  season,  but  where  the  very 
fertility  and  depth  of  the  soil  make  transportation 
on  common  roads  almost  impracticable  at  the  sea- 
son when  produce  ought  to  be  sent  to  market, 
and  this  region  now  for  the  first  time  opened  to 
a  market  by  railroad.  The  farmer  himself  in  the 
interior  of  the  state  will  be  nearer  New  York  in 
time  and  even  in  cheapness  of  transporting  his 
produce  than  the  fertile  Genesee  valley  was  be- 
fore the  Erie  Canal  was  made,  and  where  poorer 
land  is  now  worth  one  hundred  dollars  per  acre 


46  AN  AMERICAN   RAILROAD  BUILDER 

and  upwards  —  nearer  in  time  than  many  parts 
of  the  interior  of  New  York  and  Ohio  now  are'^ 

The  result  of  this  constant  hammering  and  of 
such  a  fact  —  patent  to  all  —  as  the  success  of 
the  Michigan  Central,  was  that  the  English  threw 
their  hesitation  to  the  winds,  and  after  it  their 
discretion  too.  The  same  British  lack  of  discrim- 
ination which,  after  the  panic  of  1837,  had  lumped 
together  all  investments  in  the  Middle  West  as 
bad,  now  lumped  them  all  together  as  good. 

Whatever  the  remote  danger  from  this  state  of 
things,  —  and,  as  will  presently  appear,  it  was  a 
danger  that  Forbes  saw  clearly,  —  the  immediate 
advantage  to  the  Michigan  Central  was  the  as- 
surance of  an  adequate  supply  of  money  for  its 
westward  extension.  Its  first  move  was  to  build 
some  ten  miles  of  track,  from  New  Buffalo,  in 
Michigan,  to  Michigan  City,  in  Indiana.  There 
remained  fifty-five  miles  to  be  constructed  to 
Chicago,  —  work  which  had  to  be  done  under 
conditions  of  irritation  and  excitement,  for  their 
rival  in  the  race,  the  Michigan  Southern,  proved 
to  be  both  alert  and  slippery.  To  build  in  In- 
diana, the  Michigan  Central  put  money  into  the 
New  Albany  and  Salem  road,  a  local  affair  which 
had  thirty-five  miles  of  track  in  the  southern 
part  of  the  state  and  a  charter  conveniently 
vague,  and  which,  in  return  for  the  grateful  in- 
flow of  Eastern  capital,  consented  to  begin  build- 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         47 

ing  at  once  a  "  branch  "  around  Lake  Michigan, 
in  the  northwestern  corner  of  the  state.  The 
"  Southrons  "  protested,  and  persistently  sought 
injunctions;  the  Michigan  Central  men,  to  prove 
their  good  faith,  had  to  put  their  hands  deeper 
into  their  pockets,  with  the  result  that  the  New 
Albany  and  Salem  achieved  the  glory  of  becom- 
inor  the  first  line  to  connect  Lake  Michioran  and 
the  Ohio  Eiver. 

In  building  the  twenty  miles  of  track  in  Illi- 
nois between  the  state  line  and  Chicago,  even 
greater  difficulties  were  in  the  way.  Partly  from 
proper  reasons  of  economy,  but  chiefly  because 
it  had  no  charter  and  the  leg^islature  would  not 
meet  for  a  year  and  a  half,  the  Michigan  Central 
desired  to  build  and  use  a  track  in  common  with 
the  Illinois  Central;  and  a  secret  agreement  was 
made  between  the  two  companies  by  which  the 
Illinois  road,  in  building  its  branch  from  Chi- 
cago, was  to  deflect  its  line  some  half  a  dozen 
miles  to  the  east,  touching  the  Indiana  boundary 
at  the  point  where  the  Michigan  Central  stopped. 
In  return  for  this  favor,  the  Illinois  Central,  as 
yet  barely  organized,  acquired  the  universal  de- 
sideratum. Eastern  capital,  and  could  begin  to 
build  at  once. 

At  the  mere  suspicion  of  such  plans,  Chicago 
burst  into  wrath.  Hitherto  its  isolation  had 
greatly  retarded  its  growth.  Islanded  in  "wet 


48  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

prairie  "  and  Illinois  mud,  it  was  practically  in- 
accessible by  land;  by  water  the  route  from  the 
East  was  long  and  roundabout,  while  from  the 
West  the  Illinois  and  Michis^an  Canal  had  been 
open  for  only  a  few  years.  Thus  in  1850,  though 
it  had  increased  by  10,000  in  the  preceding 
decade,  its  population  was  still  under  30,000,  a 
pitiable  showing  when  compared  with  the  great 
river  cities  of  Cincinnati  with  115,000,  and  St. 
Louis  with  78,000.  Through  railroads  it  hoped 
for  salvation ;  and  yet  even  here  there  was  dan- 
ger. Lying  fifteen  miles  to  the  north  of  the  south- 
ern end  of  Lake  Michigan,  it  had  fears  lest  the 
main  line  of  traffic  to  the  west  and  the  southwest 
might  pass  it  by  altogether ;  and  it  shuddered 
at  the  prospect  of  becoming  a  mere  way-station 
on  a  branch.  Therefore,  when  in  the  spring  of 
1851  the  city  discovered  that  three  railroad  com- 
panies were  making  plans  for  entering  it,  it  as- 
sumed an  attitude  of  aggressive  sensitiveness, — 
perhaps  not  unknown  since,  —  and  sought  to 
dictate  terms.  Newspapers,  city  officials,  and 
business  men  insisted  that  no  through  passen- 
gers or  freight  should  be  transferred  at  any 
junction-point  outside  the  city,  but  that  all  should 
be  brought  within  its  gates  for  tribute.  Further- 
more, the  hack-drivers  and  teamsters,  fearing 
that  their  prospective  trade  might  be  nothing 
but  a  Tantalus  glimpse,  raised  a  cry  that  each 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         49 

railroad  must  enter  the  city  on  its  own  tracks 
and  have  its  own  station. 

These  matters  all  came  to  a  head  in  July, 
1851,  when  two  "railroad  conventions"  were 
held  in  Chicago,  at  which  the  plans  of  the  roads 
for  reaching  the  city  were  made  known  to  the 
public.  The  commotion,  it  is  true,  never  reached 
the  intensity  of  the  "  Erie  War,"  that  famous 
contest  for  a  break  in  gauge  in  order  that  the 
piemen  of  Erie,  Pennsylvania,  might  sell  their 
wares  to  passengers  changing  cars ;  but  it  is 
amusingly  characteristic  of  this  period  in  railroad- 
building.  Indeed,  for  a  season  the  lustre  of  even 
the  great  Judge  Douglas  was  dimmed  in  Chicago 
by  reason  of  his  attitude  on  the  railroad  question. 

The  Michigan  Southern  smoothed  its  way  di- 
plomatically. Having  secured  the  charter  of  a 
plank-road  company  which  was  alleged  to  have 
railroad  privileges,  it  proposed  to  come  into  the 
city  on  its  own  track,  thus  making  sure  of  a 
gracious  reception  by  the  Chicagoans  and  of  a 
generous  subscription  from  them  to  its  stock. 
The  Illinois  Central  and  the  Michigan  Central, 
for  proposing  to  come  in  together,  were  looked 
upon  with  disfavor.  The  directors  of  the  Illinois 
road  accordingly  did  not  dare  to  carry  out  their 
agreement  to  swing  their  track  eastward  to  the 
Indiana  line  and  there  connect  with  the  Michi- 
gan road.  The  nearest  that  they  would  consent 


50  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

to  come  left  a  gap  of  six  and  a  half  miles,  over 
which  Brooks  and  Joy  proposed  to  build  with- 
out a  charter,  trusting  to  the  next  legislature  to 
leo'alize  their  action. 

Forbes  protested.  "Going  without  a  charter 
a  quarter-section  is  as  bad  as  the  Atlantic  would 
be."  Unused  prairie  though  the  land  was,  he 
argued,  their  enemies  would  be  sure  to  build  a 
highway  across  their  proposed  line  to  block 
them.  Nevertheless,  as  the  months  went  on  this 
unsatisfactory  scheme  proved  to  be  the  only  basis 
on  which  it  was  possible  to  go  ahead. 

Meanwhile  in  Indiana  each  company  was  racing 
to  get  its  line  completed  first.  The  Michigan 
Southern  men  had  the  advantage  of  a  good  start, 
and  were  not  retarded  by  scruples  as  to  building 
solidly,  but  the  seasons  in  their  courses  fought 
against  them.  The  rails  for  the  last  section  of 
their  track  reached  Dunkirk,  on  Lake  Erie,  after 
the  lake  was  closed  to  navigation,  and,  as  luck 
would  have  it,  in  the  following  spring  the  lake 
was  not  clear  until  a  month  later  than  usual.  So, 
although  the  Chicago  end  of  the  line  was  com- 
pleted, in  Indiana  passengers  and  freight  must 
be  transported  a  distance  of  thirteen  miles  over 
a  plank  road.  The  Michigan  Central,  on  the 
other  hand,  having  ordered  its  iron  in  good  sea- 
son from  England,  built  steadily  and  achieved 
the  triumph  of  beginning  its  regular  through 


THE  MICHIGAN   CENTRAL  RAILROAD         51 

service  on  May  21,  1852,  a  day  ahead  of  the  first 
through  train  on  the  Michigan  Southern,  and  a 
"week  before  that  road  was  in  regular  running 
order.  A  month  later,  at  a  special  session  of  the 
Illinois  legislature,  the  six-mile  bit  of  track  in 
Illinois  was  lesralized. 

In  the  midst  of  thisstruofsrle  to  extend  its  road 
to  the  west,  the  Michigan  Central  was  forced  to 
look  also  to  the  matter  of  Eastern  connections. 
A  line  of  roads  between  Buffalo  and  Toledo  con- 
necting with  the  Michigan  Southern  was  already 
under  construction.  Therefore  the  Michifran  Cen- 
tral  stockholders  were  urged,  in  the  most  per- 
suasive of  circulars,  to  subscribe  to  the  stock 
of  the  Canada  Great  Western,  which  was  to  run 
from  Windsor,  opposite  Detroit,  through  Ontario 
to  Niagara  Falls,  there  crossing  the  river  by  a 
suspension-bridge.  Although  the  scheme  had 
manyadvantages,  notably  in  the  shortness  of  the 
route,  Forbes  and  his  friends  were  hampered  by 
the  necessity  of  working  with  a  foreign  corpora- 
tion. First,  the  Canadian  road  insisted  on  a  dif- 
ferent gauge  of  track  from  that  of  the  Michigan 
Central.  Then,  at  the  instigation  of  sharp  citi- 
zens of  Detroit,  with  an  eye  for  making  a  penny 
out  of  delayed  travellers,  it  attempted  to  locate 
its  station  in  Windsor  at  a  point  as  remote  as 
possible  from  the  station  of  the  Michigan  Central. 

A  later  and  more  serious  cause  of  trouble  was 


52  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

the  attempt  of  its  Canadian  directors  to  sell  the 
road  to  the  Grand  Trunk.  Journeys  to  Canada 
on  the  part  of  Forbes  and  other  American  direc- 
tors were  constantly  necessary  "  to  kill  off  some 
rascals";  but  as  troubles  continued  and  multi- 
plied, and  as  it  was  found  inexpedient  to  make 
an  appeal  to  the  English  government,  the  Michi- 
gan Central  men,  after  a  few  years,  withdrew 
altogether. 

In  these  labors  to  make  the  Michigan  Central 
a  link  in  an  all-rail  route  from  the  East  to  Chicago, 
the  directors  of  the  road  had  assumed  heavy  bur- 
dens and  run  great  risks.  Besides  adding  a  mil- 
lion and  a  half  to  the  cost  of  their  own  road,  they 
had  been  obliged  to  purchase  bonds  of  the  Illi- 
nois Central  and  the  Indiana  roads  to  the  amount 
of  $600,000  and  $800,000  respectively,  and  they 
had  contributed  no  less  heavily  to  the  Canadian 
line.  But  they  had  been  face  to  face  with  the 
emergency  of  competition.  Not  to  have  accepted 
the  challenge  would  have  been  to  throw  away  all 
the  money  and  labor  that  they  had  put  into  the 
road  —  a  mocking  of  their  visions.  And  from 
the  competition  which  they  had  spent  so  much  to 
enter  there  lay  a  further  danger,  in  that  their 
rivals  were  unscrupulous. 

For  the  next  five  years  operating  expenses 
were  heavily  increased  by  the  necessity  of  more 
frequent  and  more  rapid  passenger  trains,  and  of 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         53 

"  runners"  at  various  Eastern  passenger  stations, 
and  earnings  were  cut  into  by  reduced  freight 
rates.  Every  truce  made  in  the  shape  of  an  agree- 
ment as  to  rates  was  secretly  violated  by  the 
Michigan  Southern,  and  then  followed  open  war. 
This  state  of  thin^fs  continued  until  the  Michi- 
gan  Southern  was  wrecked  in  the  panic  of  1857. 
After  that,  with  a  new  management  in  control, 
an  arrangement  that  proved  permanent  was  made 
between  the  two  roads  by  which  the  steamboat 
lines  of  both  on  Lake  Erie  were  withdrawn,  the 
number  and  the  speed  of  the  through  passenger 
trains  were  reduced,  and  the  freight  earnings 
pooled  on  a  basis  of  fifty-eight  per  cent  for  the 
Michigan  Central  and  forty-two  per  cent  for  the 
Michigan  Southern.  In  this  fashion  these  finan- 
ciers discovered  the  laws  of  competition  and 
combination  in  the  field  of  railroading. 

In  spite  of  the  weight  of  the  burdens  caused 
by  construction  and  competition,  the  prosperity 
of  the  Michigan  Central  in  the  years  from  1852 
to  1857  was  sufficient  to  carry  them  easily.  In  a 
resume  of  the  history  of  the  road  made  by  Forbes 
in  December,  1855,  after  nine  years  of  operating 
under  private  ownership,  he  told  the  story  of  its 
success  in  strikino^  fio^ures. 

The  history  of  raih-oad  enterprise  in  the  West, 
up  to  that  time  [181:6],  was  one  of  almost  univer- 


54  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

sal  failure,  and  we  were  entering  upon  ground 
that  was  worse  than  untried ;  it  had  been  prema- 
turely tried  under  the  auspices  of  the  state  gov- 
ernments, and  isolated  embankments  at  various 
points  stood  as  monuments  of  disaster.  .  .  . 

With  very  good  management  it  [the  Michigan 
Central]  was  capable  of  earning  as  a  maximum 
$400,000  per  annum;  it  has  now  grown  to  be 
269  miles  long,  with  a  power  of  earning  over 
$2,500,000. 

During  our  first  winter,  say  December,  Janu- 
ary and  February,  1846-47,  our  total  receipts 
were  about  $53,000.  For  the  first  winter  after 
our  completion  to  Chicago,  say  December,  Janu- 
ary and  February,  1852-53,  our  receipts  had 
grown  to  be  $164,000.  While  we  have  earned 
during  the  first  two  iveeks  of  this  month,  De- 
cember, 1855,  $114,000. 

The  present  termini  of  our  road  then  claimed 
to  have,  Detroit  and  Chicago,  each  about  14,000 
inhabitants,  the  former  now  claims  49,600,  and 
the  latter  80,000.  .  .  . 

The  whole  number  of  miles  of  railroad  west 
of  Buffalo  and  north  of  the  Ohio  River  was  only 
about  500  miles,  and  these  laid  with  a  flat  rail ; 
where  there  are  now  over  7300  miles  of  road 
finished  with  heavy  rails,  besides  a  large  amount 
of  unfinished  roads. 

Detroit  was  then  three  days'  journey  from  the 
seaboard  in  the  summer,  and  five  or  six  days  in 
winter.  It  can  now  be  reached  in  about  twenty- 
seven  hours. 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         55 

With  an  addition  to  construction  of  thirty- 
eight  per  cent,  the  business  of  the  road  had  grown 
one  hundred  and  forty  per  cent.  The  increase 
in  gross  earnings  in  1855  over  1854  was  forty 
per  cent,  and  the  limit  of  its  capacity  as  a  single- 
track  road  was  fast  being  reached.  Moreover, 
the  increase  of  traffic  from  the  new  roads  in  Il- 
linois which  were  in  alliance  with  the  Michigan 
Central  —  the  Illinois  Central  and  the  Chicaofo, 
Burlington,  and  Quincy^  — was  only  just  begin- 
ning to  be  felt. 

In  this  period  of  feverish  expansion  and  fierce 
competition  the  management  of  the  railroad  re- 
mained unchanged.  The  burden  of  responsibility 
borne  by  Brooks  and  Forbes  had,  of  course,  in- 
creased enormously ;  and  their  long  toil  was  filled 
with  diverse  activities  and  charo^ed  in  the  hiofhest 
degree  with  excitement.  It  was  not  within  the 
power  of  either  man  to  hold  himself  to  the  strict 
letter  of  his  proper  duties.  Thus  Forbes  busied 
himself  with  a  comprehensive  scheme  of  railroads 
for  the  State  of  Illinois,  and  even  of  lines  beyond 
the  Mississippi,  at  a  time  when  there  were  not 
a  hundred  miles  of  track  west  of  Chicaofo :  thus 
also  he  took  hold  of  the  company  which,  with 
Brooks  as  constructor,  built  the  "  Soo  "  canal. 
The  thousand  and  one  possibilities  which  his 
nimble  imagination  was  continually  starting  up, 

1  See  pp.  73-78. 


56  AN  AMERICAN   RAILROAD  BUILDER 

his  relentless  habit  of  action  drove  him  to  carry 
into  execution.  No  detail  escaped  him.  Having 
noted  the  character  of  the  land  in  southwestern 
Michigan,  he  tried  to  have  the  cultivation  of  beet- 
sugar  begun  there;  he  sent  fir  and  spruce  trees 
to  be  planted  on  the  station  grounds  of  the  rail- 
road ;  he  suggested  improvements  in  passenger 
cars;  he  threw  himself  with  ardor  into  the  details 
of  construction  and  equipment  of  the  company's 
boats  on  Lake  Erie.  Moreover,  with  all  these  af- 
fairs on  his  handsj  he  was  supposed  to  have 
enough  time  to  hear  the  complaints  of  dissatis- 
fied patrons.  "  One  of  our  large  stockholders/' 
he  wrote  to  a  correspondent,  "wants  to  bring  a 
friend  to  let  me  know  how  badly  we  manage.  A 
white-gloved,  mustachioed  youth  is  shewn  up,  who 
is  in  the  habit  of  going  from  Detroit  twenty  miles 
west,  and  he  telths  me  in  a  lithping  voith  I  can't 
contheive  of  the  ungentlemanly  conduct  of  the 
conductorth  —  often  and  often  he  could  not  get 
a  theat  exthept  alongthide  of  thome  rough  ill- 
drethed  fellow  and  onth  he  had  paid  a  dollar  to 
a  fellow  to  get  up ! 

"Well!  I  tried  to  hire  the  young  gentleman 
at  double  his  entire  value  per  annum  to  go  every- 
where and  abuse  us,  as  being  the  type  of  a  con- 
siderable clan  of  complainants  who  want  RRd 
Companies  to  send  along  twenty  tons  of  cars  to 
carry  the  number  of  passengers  that  ten  tons  of 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         57 

cars  are  made  to  carry^  and  this  without  the  w^- 
evitahle  consequence  of  such  waste,  viz.,  the 
charofinof  the  Passeno^er  with  this  additional  cost 
of  his  transportation." 

Then,  too,  the  conditions  under  which  Forbes 
did  his  work  would,  to  the  business  man  of  to- 
day, seem  appalling.  Not  only  was  there  no  tele- 
phone, but  even  the  telegraph  was  used  sparingly. 
Furthermore,  since  Brooks  and  Joy  were  at  De- 
troit, and  two  of  the  leading  directors.  Green 
and  Corning,  were  in  New  York  and  Albany 
respectively,  the  discussion  of  every  important 
matter  had  to  be  through  correspondence,  and 
almost  all  Forbes's  letters  were  written  with  his 
own  hand.  At  the  end  of  a  day  in  which  he  had 
filled  thirty-one  pages  of  his  letter-press  book, 
he  wrote :  "  Y'rs  in  great  haste,  hunger,  and  all 
uncharitableness,  having  been  here  at  my  desk 
since  8^  A.  m.,  now  6  p.  m.,  living  upon  crackers ! 
but  still.  Yours  Truly." 

The  pace  of  such  a  life  was  naturally  great. 
Though  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight  he  described 
himself  as  having  "  the  appetite  of  a  horse,  the 
digestion  of  an  ostrich,  and  legs  up  to  eight 
hours'  walk  per  diem  without  fatigue,"  yet  the 
strain  was  too  much  even  for  his  constitution. 
In  1855,  after  a  trip  to  England,  whither  he  had 
been  ordered  for  rest,  he  wrote,  urging  a  vaca- 
tion on  a  fellow  director :  '^  With  my  rude  health 


58  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

and  streno^tli  I  find  that  I  cannot  stand  the  wear 
and  tear  of  constant  thought  and  I  am  deter- 
mined not  to  sacrifice  myself  to  it.  On  my  out- 
ward passage  to  England  I  found  the  railroads 
had  made  such  inroads  upon  my  brain  that  the 
moment  I  got  asleep  I  was  harder  at  work  upon 
them  than  when  here ;  and  until  I  got  on  shore 
and  amid  new  scenes  I  could  not  get  rid  of  the 
cursed  nightmare  of  a  railroad  horse  riding  me." 

With  his  return  home  his  worries  came  back, 
and  he  was  given  strict  orders  to  reduce  his  bur- 
den of  responsibility.  "  Being  of  a  nervous,  anx- 
ious temperament,  it  takes  me  down  and  may 
take  me  off."  Accordingly,  in  December,  1855, 
after  nine  years'  service  as  president,  he  sent 
to  the  directors  of  the  Michigan  Central  his  re- 
signation. Thus  lightened  of  his  chief  burden, 
Forbes  expected  to  be  able  to  give  time  to  newer 
railroad  interests  which  had  developed  farther 
west,  and  yet  have  enough  leisure  and  freedom 
from  care  to  piece  together  his  broken  health. 

This  hope,  however,  was  not  to  be  fulfilled. 
The  new  management  of  the  Central  was  natu- 
rally more  versed  in  ways  and  means  for  securing 
effective  service  on  the  road  than  in  the  mainte- 
nance of  a  sound  financial  policy.  It  immediately 
launched  forth  into  large  expenditures  for  cars 
and  locomotives  and  for  the  improvement  of 
station-lands  and  buildings  at  Chicago  and  De- 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         59 

troit,  and  it  purchased  another  steamer  to  run  on 
Lake  Erie.  To  this  end  it  borrowed  money  heav- 
ily and,  despite  the  mild  protests  of  conservative 
directors,  at  the  same  time  continued  to  pay  semi- 
annual dividends  of  five  per  cent.  Furthermore, 
trusting  that  there  would  be  no  break  in  the  suc- 
cession of  prosperous  years,  it  neglected  Forbes's 
parting  word  of  advice  that  a  sinking  fund  should 
be  established  for  future  contingencies.  The 
natural  result  was  the  appearance  in  the  report  of 
June,  1857,  of  a  large  floating  debt.  At  sight  of 
this  Forbes  roused  himself  to  urge  that  it  should 
be  funded  by  an  issue  of  stock  or  bonds,  and  that 
the  semi-annual  dividends  should  be  reduced  to 
four  per  cent.  Nothing  was  done  at  the  time, 
however,  and  Forbes,  busy  at  his  island  home  of 
Naushon,  where  he  was  trusting  to  complete  his 
recuperation  by  a  summer  spent  in  "  eating,  sleep- 
ing, talking,  and  wearing  out  old  clothes,"  let 
the  matter  go. 

In  spite  of  the  summer  calm  prevailing  both 
in  the  financial  world  and  at  Naushon,  the  dis- 
aster which  Forbes  had  foretold — "an  awful 
smash-up  in  railways  from  ill  management,  dis- 
honesty, overdoing"  —  was  at  hand.  Yet,  as  is 
always  the  case  with  panics,  the  weather-wise 
saw  little  cause  for  alarm  in  the  small  cloud  that 
towards  the  end  of  August  appeared  above  the 
horizon,  and  predicted  only  a  squall.  On  August 


60  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

25,  1857,  Forbes's  agent  in  Boston  wrote  to  his 
correspondents  in  China:  "The  specie  in  the 
New  York  banks  has  fallen  off  to  about  ten  mil- 
lion, and  we  have  in  prospect  a  good  deal  of  a 
contraction  in  loans  with  a  consequent  tight 
money-market.  There  is  quite  a  panic  to-day  in 
New  York,  arising  out  of  the  failure  of  the  Ohio 
Life  and  Trust  Company  and  several  large  oper- 
ators in  Western  railroad  securities,  and  prices 
of  stocks  (generally  railroad)  have  tumbled  down 
so  much  as  to  give  cause  for  a  great  deal  of  un- 
easiness as  to  the  extent  of  the  damage  to  other 
interests.  .  .  .  As  soon  as  the  rotten  railroad  con- 
cerns are  out  of  the  market  as  borrowers,  an  im- 
provement in  the  general  tone  will  probably  take 
place." 

This  scare,  the  beginning  of  the  panic  which 
made  the  year  1857  memorable,  roused  the  man- 
agement of  the  Michigan  Central  to  action ;  but 
they  had  delayed  too  long,  and  the  course  of 
events  was  soon  beyond  their  control.  "  We  are 
in  such  a  crisis,"  Forbes  wrote,^  "  as  only  those 
who  went  throuo^h  1837  can  conceive  of  —  New 
York  Central  Railroad  has  run  down  from  87  to 
55,  and  Michigan  Central  from  95  to  45,  while 
the  weaker  concerns  are  clear  out  of  sight  — 
Erie  10,  Southern  Michigan  10-15. 

^  September  28.     Letters  and  Recollections  of  John  Murray 
Forbes,  vol.  i,  p.  167. 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         61 

"  Having  taken  in  sail,  not  expecting  a  storm, 
but  out  of  pure  laziness,  I  am  very  easy  unless 
other  people  swamp  me;  but  I  don't  believe 
W.  Appleton's  note  indorsed  by  W.  Sturgis 
would  bring  $100,000  here  within  forty-eight 
hours,  at   three  per  cent  per   month,  —  such 

is    the  panic." 

For  the  unfortunate  Michigan  Central  it 
seemed  as  if  all  were  lost ;  but  to  Forbes  such 
an  emergency  was  a  call  that  summoned  all  his 
stores  of  courage,  loyalty,  and  resourcefulness 
to  do  the  impossible.  He  appealed  to  a  New 
York  director  *  — 

Brooks  writes  me  that  you  talk  of  resigning. 
Such  a  step  at  this  crisis  would  have  the  worst 
possible  effect  upon  our  own  friends  and  also  on 
the  public.  Jno.  Thayer  [the  Boston  banker]  is 
sick,  and  this  throws  a  great  weight  on  his  bro- 
ther ;  Livermore  nervous  and  timid.  Brooks  over- 
worked, and  inexperienced  in  finances.  ...  If 
you  and  I  give  up,  I  see  nothing  for  it  but  panic. 
As  far  as  I  am  j^ersonally  concerned,  perhaps 
it  will  be  best  for  us  all  to  give  in  and  leave  it 
to  the  stockholders  to  fill  our  places,  but  to  de- 
sert our  post  just  now  does  not  seem  to  be  the 
thing,  and  when  you  look  at  it  in  its  practical 
aspect  I  hope  you  will  agree  with  me  that  we  had 
better  hold  on  at  least  through  the  squall,  and 
when  we  go  leave  the  ship  in  a  safe  place.^ 

1  September  26,  1857. 


I 


I 

62          AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER  ] 

To  J.  N.  A.  Griswold,  another  of  the  direct-  ^ 
ors,  he  wrote  as  follows  :  — 

Jno.  E.  Thayer  is  dying  or  dead,  banks  and  \ 

money-lenders  scared  into  panic,  and  I  am  called  i 
up  to  a  meeting  of  the  Mich.  Central  to  advise 
what  to  do  about  carrying  their  floating  debt 

(1400  n  [thousand]  and  over  the  last  report)  \ 

and  meeting  bonds  maturing.  G shows  some      *    < 

signs  of  backing  out  (but  I  hope  to  induce  him 
to  act  with  us)  just  in  the  midst  of  this  storm, 

from  his  share  of  responsibility,  just  when  the  i 
company  must  take  the  conservative   measures 
which  his  cautious  disposition  has  always  pointed 
to,  but  which  he  failed  to  advocate  strongly  at 

a  time  when  they  were  opposed  by  others.  Now  \ 

caution  and  foresight  are  the  order  of  the  day.  j 

I  can  myself  see  no  way  but  to  advertise  for  J 

proposals  for  a  new  loan,  make  it  safe  with  sink-  \ 

ing-f  und,  tempting  in  its  terms,  and  accept  a  low  j 

price,  shut  off  construction,  and  in  fact  take  any  \ 

steps  (not  suicidal)  that  money-lenders  may  die-  \ 

Laie.  *  •  •  j 

Supposing  we  publish  proposals  for  $2,000,-  ! 

000,  payable  through  several  months.  Do  you  | 

feel  disposed  to  make  one  of  a  party  to  make  a  \ 
bid  for  those  bonds,  at  a  low  rate,  so  that  if 

others  don't  give  more  we  can  get  them  at  a  rate  j 

that  will  make  us  very  safe  ?  They  will  probably  \ 
be  eight  per  cent  bonds  convertible,  20  to  25 

years,  with  a  sinking-fund  large  enough  to  pay  ! 

them  all  before  they  mature ;  each  year  the  sink-  | 

ing-f  und  to  be  applied  by  coynmissioners  to  buy-  \ 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         63 

ing  this  issue  of  bonds  by  public  proposals,  so 
long  as  they  can  be  had  at  par  or  perhaps  110. 
I  think  Barings  will  take  hold  of  it.  Thayers 
must  take  a  large  slice.  Holders  of  bonds  matur- 
ing ($800,000  or  more  within  10  months)  will 
naturally  come  in  to  a  certain  extent,  and  the 
smaller  capitalists  will  do  something,  .   .  . 

With  a  conservative  Board  on  the  Southern 
Road  and  a  general  tendency  towards  reducing 
speed  and  raising  prices,  the  Co.  ought  to  be 
worth  more  than  it  ever  was  before. 

Though  these  exhortations  put  an  end  to  talk 
of  resigning,  matters  otherwise  grew  worse.  The 
squall  proved  to  be  a  '^  tremendous  hurricane," 
with  suspension  of  specie  payments  a  near  prob- 
ability. If  any  succor  were  to  be  obtained  for 
the  Michigan  Central  it  must  come  from  abroad, 
and  Forbes  himself  must  go  to  get  it,  though 
there  was  small  chance  that  the  Barings  would 
listen  to  his  proposals.  Such  a  scheme  received, 
as  he  wrote  afterwards,  "nothing  but  discourage- 
ment from  all  my  conservative  friends;  they 
looked  upon  our  plan  as  desperate,  indeed,  as 
being  only  a  ^  forlorn  hope.' "  Still,  as,  in  the 
demoralization  of  the  panic,  he  was  the  only  one 
who  kept  a  cool  head  and  a  resolute  will,  there 
was  nothing  for  him  to  do  but  pack  his  trunk  at 
a  day's  notice  and  take  the  first  steamer  for 
England. 


64  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

Soon  after  his  departure  the  general  suspen- 
sion of  specie  payments  became  a  fact,  and  the 
Michigan  Central  declared  itself  unable  to  pay 
the  interest  on  its  floating  debt.  Nevertheless, 
through  the  personal  appeals  that  Forbes  had 
made  before  he  went,  the  subscriptions,  when 
the  bids  were  opened  on  November  10,  were 
adequate ;  and,  with  what  he  obtained  in  Eng- 
land, though  the  terms  were  not  easy,  the  whole 
sum  was  made  up.  Though  the  first  bonds  went 
for  70,  within  two  months'  time  they  were  worth 
93.  In  short,  thanks  to  this  heroic  effort,  the 
Michigan  Central  was  in  a  better  position  than 
ever  before.  Writing  on  December  9,  after  his 
return  to  America,  to  an  English  correspondent 
in  Calcutta  who  had  been  prompt  to  help,  Forbes 
summed  up  the  story  thus :  — 

The  rival  road  has  now  made  a  combination 
with  M.  Central  as  an  experiment  which  destroys 
competition,  and,  with  a  better  chance  than  ever 
for  reduced  expenses,  its  future  looks  very  well 
to  those  who  are  not  depending  on  this  year's 
dividends,  which  will  go  to  clear  off  old  scores. 
Its  credit  will  hardly  be  touched,  considering 
the  power  it  has  shown  of  recovering  from  the 
sudden  flaw  which  capsized  it ;  and  many  men 
think  better  of  it  than  before,  because  in  the 
midst  of  panic,  the  Co.  shewed  pluck  and  protected 
old  bonds  and  new  alike  by  its  mortgage.  Any 


THE  MICHIGAN  CENTRAL  RAILROAD         65 

road,  they  say,  may  get  caught,  but  this  one  has 
not  only  shewn  capacity  to  pay,  but  a  sense  of 
mercantile  honesty  to  its  bondholders  and  other 
creditors  which  begets  more  confidence  than  the 
mere  capacity  to  pay. 

With  this  signal  act  of  courage  and  devotion 
to  the  interests  of  the  road  for  which  from  the 
beginning  he  had  been  responsible,  it  may  be 
said  that  the  days  of  Forbes's  railroad  education 
were  completed.  So  far  as  money  went,  his  profit 
had  been  small.  The  only  direct  return  was  a  sum 
of  |20,000  which  the  board  of  the  Michigan 
Central  had  voted  to  him  at  the  end  of  his  term, 
to  replace  his  salary ;  the  opportunity  at  the  time 
of  the  crisis  of  purchasing  stocks  and  bonds  at 
a  low  figure  he  had  been  too  hard  pressed  to  take 
much  advantage  of ;  and  when  a  few  years  later 
the  great  rise  in  Michigan  Central  came,  he  had 
sold  the  larger  part  of  his  holdings.  But  in  rail- 
road financiering  he  had  received  an  invaluable 
train ino^.  He  had  taken  the  road  throuo^h  all 
the  stages  from  "promotion"  to  bankruptcy,  and 
had  brought  it  out  triumphant.  This  fact  was 
generally  recognized,  and  the  increased  confi- 
dence which  was  everywhere  felt  regarding  the 
safety  of  the  Michigan  Central  was  in  effect  a 
recognition  of  the  honesty  of  its  first  president. 


CHAPTER  III 

RAILROAD    BUILDING   IN    ILLINOIS    AND    BEYOND 

RAILROAD  enterprises  inevitably  quicken 
in  those  who  plan  and  manage  them  an 
attitude  of  mind  that  is  not  local  but  national. 
The  business  of  transportation  is  founded  on  large 
geographical  relationships ;  the  point  of  view  of  a 
railroad  builder  cannot  be  narrower  than  that  of  a 
statesman.  Though  in  comparison  with  the  under- 
takings of  the  present  day  the  task  of  planning 
railroads  for  the  single  state  of  Illinois  may  seem 
sufficiently  local,  the  conditions  in  the  early  fif- 
ties were  such  as  to  involve  operations  of  national, 
and  even  of  international,  extent.  To  obtain 
the  capital  for  getting  these  enterprises  under 
way  appeal  must  be  made  to  England ;  to  provide 
the  necessary  population  for  the  broad  prairies 
immigration  from  Europe  must  be  stimulated  and 
directed ;  from  the  Middle  West,  in  return,  the 
countries  of  the  Old  World  must  be  taught  to 
buy  their  breadstuffs.  With  problems  of  no  less 
scope  than  these  the  Western  railroad-builders 
of  those  days  must  be  able  to  grapple,  and  in 
masterful  fashion. 

Forbes's  views  on  the  question  of  immigration 


RAILROAD  BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  67 

illustrate  the  point.  In  1852,  his  attention  was 
drawn  to  the  investigations  made  by  Edward 
Everett  Hale,  then  a  young  minister  of  thirty, 
concerning  the  abuses  that  had  already  sprung  up 
in  connection  with  the  introduction  of  European 
labor.  Writing  to  Hale,  Forbes  pointed  out  the 
extent  to  which  immigrants  travelling  west  by  rail 
and  boat  were  fleeced  by  "scalpers";  and  he 
urged  the  importance  of  some  organization  which, 
by  combiningbusiness  methods  with  philanthropy, 
should  bring  the  foreigner  to  his  new  home  un- 
attended by  robbery  and  deceit.  The  penalty  for 
the  evils  he  condemned  we  are  paying  in  our  own 
generation. 

I  have  long  been  of  the  opinion  [he  wrote] 
that  the  subject  of  Emigration  opened  the  widest 
field  of  this  century  for  a  scheme  of  practical 
benevolence,  and  indeed  for  carrying  into  prac- 
tice the  theories  of  political  economy ;  but  it  will 
require  a  combination  of  practical  mercantile 
wisdom  with  a  spirit  of  patience  and  even  of 
martyrdom  that  we  can  hardly  hope  to  see.  I 
know  of  no  elements  that  offer  more  inducement 
to  the  economist  to  bring  them  together  than 
the  strong  hands  and  empty  stomachs  of  Europe, 
and  the  rich  Dollar-an-acre  Prairies  of  the  West. 
California  is  a  cypher  in  comparison,  a  mere  pro- 
ducer of  the  7neasii7^e  of  value,  not  of  value  it- 
self. The  railroads  which  are  at  last  checkering 
the  West  in  all  directions  will  give  a  new  element 


68  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

of  certainty  to  the  transit  of  the  Emigrant  which 
has  been  hitherto  wanting,  and  when  steam  or 
some  other  motive  power  shall  make  one  or  two 
more  steps  onward  so  that  you  can  count  the 
hours  which  it  will  take  to  carry  your  starving 
Celt  or  German  from  his  old  home  to  the  new 
one,  it  seems  to  me  that  Philanthropy  mi/s^  take 
up  Emigration  and  deal  with  it  on  commercial 
principles,  and  that  we  shall  then  see  such  an 
exodus  as  nothing  but  the  iron  hand  of  despot- 
ism can  check,  and  that  how  long  ?  .  .  . 

If  you  want  to  change  things  and  fight  the 
abuses  you  must  make  your  scheme  of  bene- 
volence a  i^rofitable  one  or  it  will  only  go  a 
mile  while  the  enemy  is  traversing  the  globe ! 
Benevolence  may  point  the  way  and  law  may  and 
must  heljD  to  regulate  the  abuses  which  have 
grown  up ;  but  when  you  are  dealing  with  an 
Emigration  of  400,000  people  who,  I  will  venture 
to  say,  are  fleeced  $10  each  to  bring  them  from 
their  hovels  in  the  old  world  to  their  houses  in 
the  new,  here  is  a  premium  of  four  millions  per 
annum  for  the  Devil  to  fight  with. 

Shew  John  Bull  with  his  capital  and  Bro. 
Jonathan  with  his  energy  how  they  can  make 
$4,000,000  out  of  the  emigrant  by  starting  him 
at  the  right  time  and  place  and  putting  him  down 
at  a  prepared  spot  where  he  can  earn  his  $  10  a 
piece  or  more  during  the  time  he  is  now  starving 
in  cities,  lingering  in  canal  boats,  and  changing 
from  place  to  place  seeking  work  or  seeking  land. 

Do  this,  and  it  is  a  low  statement  of  what  in- 
telligence and  knowledge  may  do  for  the  hordes 


RAILROAD  BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  69 

now  swarming  out  here,  and  you  soon  establish 
a  system  that  ^:)ays  its  way  and  will  grow  from 
year  to  year. 

You  will  say  Commerce  must  regulate  itself 
—  true  —  but  from  the  benevolent  suggestion  of 
Las  Casas,  which  substituted  the  whole  race  of 
Africans  for  Indians,  down  to  the  ice  trade  in- 
vented  hy  Tudor,  great  commercial  changes  have 
been  effected  by  individual  men's  pointing  the 
way  and  demonstrating  by  experiment  how  things 
may  be  done.^ 

The  possibility  of  getting  a  European  market 
for  the  grain  of  the  West  was  another  matter 
that  engaged  Forbes's  thoughts.  He  was  full  of 
schemes  for  articles  in  American  magazines  and 
for  letters  in  the  London  "  Times  "  showing  how 
much  lower  the  price  of  grain  would  be  when 
the  West  was  provided  with  adequate  railroad 
transportation.  Nothing  came  of  these  plans,  it 
is  true,  for  it  was  obvious  that  such  articles,  if 
they  found  their  way  to  Illinois,  would  not  ad- 
vantage the  railroad  in  the  eyes  of  the  farmers. 
Curiously  enough,  though,  toward  the  end  of  the 
Crimean  War,  Forbes  was  employed  as  agent  in 
the  purchase  of  large  supplies  of  breadstuffs  to 
be  sent  to  France.  Though  the  orders  came 
through  Baring  Brothers,  it  was  known  that  the 
buyer  was  Louis  Napoleon.  Plainly,  the  time  was 

1  June  24  and  30,  1852. 


70  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

near  at  hand  for  bringing  together  "  the  strong 
hands  and  empty  stomachs  of  Europe  and  the  rich 
dollar-an-acre  prairies  of  the  West." 

Last,  and  by  no  means  least,  Forbes  was  deeply 
interested  in  the  project  for  a  railroad  from  the 
Mississippi  to  the  Pacific.  Ever  since  the  begin- 
ning of  the  gold  fever  in  California  he  had  made 
ventures  with  clipper  ships,  ''  practically  yachts 
from  1500  to  3000  tons  measurement,  racing 
day  and  night  around  the  Horn,  making  w^onder- 
ful  passages  and  getting  wonderful  prices  for 
their  goods;"  and  his  brother-in-law,  Robert 
S.  Watson,  had  established  a  commission  house 
in  San  Francisco.  From  Forbes's  knowledge  of 
conditions  in  California  he  felt  strongly  the  po- 
litical and  military  as  well  as  the  economic  im- 
portance of  a  railroad  to  the  Pacific;  and  he 
repeatedly  urged  upon  members  of  Congress 
the  necessity  of  Federal  aid  for  it,  and  the 
desirability  of  its  being  built,  —  as  in  our  day 
it  has  proved  necessary  to  build  the  Panama 
Canal,  —  by  the  military  arm  of  the  govern- 
ment. 

General  considerations  such  as  these  were  ever 
present  with  Forbes.  Though  for  the  most  part 
dwelling  in  the  back  of  his  mind,  they  none  the 
less  gave  breadth  and  direction  to  his  day's  work, 
which  was  the  task  of  building  railroads  first 
across  Illinois  and  then  beyond  the  Mississippi 


RAILROAD  BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  71 

River,  always  under  abnormal  conditions  and  at 
a  forced  rate  of  speed. 

Illinois,  like  her  sister  states  in  the  Middle 
West,  possessed  the  rich  soil  that  at  the  same 
time  produced  a  marvellous  crop  and  prevented 
its  being  hauled  to  market.  As  in  their  case,  too, 
her  early  efforts  at  "  internal  improvements"  had 
come  to  naught  in  the  distressing  years  follow- 
ing the  panic  of  1837.  Even  as  late  as  1850,  all 
that  she  had  to  her  credit  were  a  canal  connect- 
ing the  Illinois  River  with  Lake  Michigan,  a  few 
miles  of  isolated  railroad  in  the  middle  of  the 
state,  and  a  number  of  unused  railroad  charters. 
In  1850,  however,  the  first  waves  of  the  return- 
ing tide,  bearing  both  population  and  capital, 
reached  Illinois,  and  at  the  same  time  success 
rewarded  the  efforts  of  the  state  to  obtain  aid 
from  the  national  government  for  railroad  de- 
velopment. The  waterways  between  Lake  Mich- 
igan and  the  Gulf  were,  as  has  already  been 
noted,  far  from  adequate  to  provide  for  the  great 
volume  of  north  and  south  traffic;  and  thus, 
for  the  sake  of  establishing  a  better  bond  be- 
tween West  and  South  through  the  construction 
of  the  Illinois  Central  and  the  Mobile  and  Ohio 
railroads,  the  Thirty-First  Congress  reversed 
the  policy  of  its  predecessors,  and  in  September, 
1850,  passed  the  first  of  the  acts  granting  public 
lands  to  aid  railroad  development. 


72  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

By  the  terms  of  this  act  the  Illinois  Central  was 
to  receive  a  right  of  way  two  hundred  feet  in 
width,  and  on  each  side  of  it  every  other  square 
mile  or  "section"  of  land  to  a  depth  of  six 
miles.  These  lands,  unsalable  at  $1.25  an  acre, 
would  by  the  building  of  the  railroad  be  sure  of 
purchasers,  and  by  doubling  the  price  per  acre 
the  government  would  be  provided  from  the  half 
of  the  land  which  it  retained  with  a  sum  equal 
to  the  price  at  which  it  had  held  the  whole.  If 
the  road  were  not  completed  within  ten  years,  the 
lands  unsold  by  it  were  to  revert  to  the  govern- 
ment, which  in  that  case  was  to  receive  also  the 
value  of  the  lands  sold.  Furthermore,  —  a  pro- 
vision which  in  later  years  has  been  used  to  the 
disadvantage  of  the  railroads,  —  the  rate  for  car- 
rying the  mails  was  to  be  fixed  by  Congress.^ 
Finally,  the  charter  granted  by  the  state  provided 
that,  in  consideration  of  payment  to  the  state  of 
7  per  cent  on  its  gross  earnings,  the  road  was  to 
be  exempt  from  taxation,  and  it  put  the  rate- 
making  power  into  the  hands  of  the  directors 
without  reservations.^  On  these  terms  the  Illinois 
Central  acquired  aright  to  2,600,000  acres,  which, 

^  U.  S.  Statutes  at  Large,  31  Cong.,  1st  session,  pp.  466, 
467. 

2  Private  Laws  of  Illinois^  1851,  pp.  61-74.  The  payment  of 
7  per  cent  was  not  to  begin  for  six  years.  For  two  years  before 
that  time,  on  completion  of  the  main  line,  the  payment  was  to 
be  5  per  cent. 


RAILROAD  BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  73 

at  the  minimum  price  of  $1.25  per  acre,  were 
worth  $3,250,000. 

A  gift  so  munificent  and  so  adequate  as  secur- 
ity to  attract  English  and  American  capital  in 
abundance,  meant  that  the  work  of  railroad-build- 
ing in  Illinois  was  to  receive  wonderful  accelera- 
tion. It  will  be  remembered  that  the  men  of  the 
Michigan  Central  at  once  saw  their  chance  to 
enter  Chicago,  and  the  first  construction  done 
by  the  Illinois  Central  was  in  pursuance  of  an 
arrangement  according  to  which  it  was  to  lay  a 
dozen  miles  of  track  out  of  Chicago  to  connect 
with  the  Michigan  Central.^  In  return,  the  latter 
road  agreed  to  supply  as  much  as  $2,000,000  in 
ready  money ;  but  a  $5,000,000  loan  which  was 
presently  secured  by  the  Illinois  Central  through 
Baring  Brothers  made  it  unnecessary  for  the 
Michigan  Central  to  furnish  more  than  $800,000. 

The  Illinois  Central,  however,  although  it  was 
sure  to  bring  a  large  amount  of  business  to  the 
older  road,  could  not  be  an  adequate  outlet  for  the 
expanding  energies  of  the  Boston  capitalists,  since 
it  was  under  New  York  control.  Yet  go  ahead 
the  Michigan  Central  must,  for  the  Michigan 
Southern  had  no  sooner  reached  Chicago  than 
its  owners  beg"an  the  construction  of  the  Chicas^o 
and  Rock  Island  Railroad,  and,  buildhig  with  in- 
credible rapidity  for  those  days,  accomplished  the 

1  See  pp.  47-60. 


74:  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

distance  of  one  hundred  and  eighty-one  miles  to 
the  Mississippi  River  in  twenty-two  and  a  half 
months.  True  gamblers,  they  borrowed  recklessly 
and  built  lightly,  at  the  same  time  forcing  men 
more  prudent  and  more  honest  into  the  game. 

Thus  it  came  to  pass  that,  early  in  1852,  the 
Michigan  Central  men  began  to  look  into  Illinois 
railroad  charters.  There  were  plenty  of  these  in 
the  hands  of  the  local  capitalists,  who,  having 
been  unable  to  make  use  of  them,  were  ready  to 
sell  out.  Of  the  Chicago  and  Aurora  thirteen 
miles  had  been  built ;  beyond  that,  stretching  to 
the  southwest  and  touching  the  Mississippi  at 
two  points,  had  been  planned  the  Central  Military 
Tract  Road,  the  Northern  Cross  Road,  and  the 
Peoria  and  Oquaqua  or  Oquawka  —  "  Phoebus, 
what  a  name!"  exclaimed  Forbes  as  he  wrote 
it.  In  order  to  make  the  charters  acceptable  to 
Eastern  capitalists,  amendments  were  secured  at 
a  special  session  of  the  Illinois  legislature  in 
June,  1852,  which  permitted  the  extension  of 
the  lines  to  make  necessary  connections,  and 
which  put  the  roads  on  an  equal  footing  with 
the  Illinois  Central  in  respect  to  the  clear  pos- 
session of  rights  to  establish  rates  for  passengers 
and  freight. 

Forbes's  work  now  began.  Here  is  his  appeal 
to  one  of  his  New  Bedford  supporters. 


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RAILROAD   BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  75  1 


Our  friends  at  the  West  have  taken  hold  of  a 
piece  of  new  road  which  they  think  very  highly 
q/,  and  have  absorbed  it  in /ar^e  ^o^s.  .  .  .  They 
have  reserved  a  small  part  for  us  at  the  East,  and 
I  suppose  N.  Bedford  can  have  five  or  ten  thou- 
sand dollars  if  you  speak  quick. 

It  looks  to  me  very  well;  but  I  have  not  time 
to  examine  it  closely,  and  if  I  take  it,  it  will  be 
in  following  the  lead  of  Brooks,  Corning,  and 
other  men  who  ought  to  know  and  who  will  have 
a  large  interest  in  looking  after  it.  So  I  cannot 
recommend  it,  but  only  offer  it. 

It  is  the  Aurora  R.  R.,  which  is  to  travel  ofp 
from  the  Galena,  30  miles  west  of  Chicago,  and 
run  westerly  to  the  Illinois  Central  —  44  and  13 
=  57  miles,  where  it  will  meet  one  or  more  roads 
projected  from  the  Mississippi  and  get  their  con- 
tributions, as  well  as  those  of  the  111.  Central 
from  south  and  north  for  the  East.  It  runs 
through  a  fertile  and  easy  country  to  build,  and 
has  no  expensive  ends,  as  it  runs  over  the  Galena 
to  Chicago  under  a  very  favorable  contract  for 
30  years.  Pray  understand  that  I  don't  endorse, 
recommend,  or  urge  it,  and  you  can  judge  about 
as  well  as  I  can  whether  its  local  business  aided 
by  such  feeders  and  a  cheap  construction  will 
counterbalance  the  disadvantage  of  taking  up  a 
new  thing  at  par. 

Thirteen  miles  are  in  operation  with  a  flat  rail 
and  doing  a  good  local  business,  so  I  hear. 

Brooks  takes  $25,000,  Capt.  Ward  $40,000, 
Corning  $30,000,  Davidson,  his  partner,  $10,000, 
Joy  and  Porter  $10,000  or  $12,000,  Chas.  Wil- 


76  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

liams  of  Stonington  (now  out  West)  takes  some- 
thing. Only  $90,000  is  reserved  for  N.  York  and 
Boston  and  will  I  think  go  like  hot  cakes  even  if 
it  does  burn  the  takers  fingers, 

N.  B.  I  doubt  about  letting  the  grumbling 
Governor  have  any — he  always  wants  perfect 
security  like  Bank  of  England  and  20  per  cent 
interest,  too  ! 

In  such  fashion  Forbes  went  from  one  man  to 
another,  confident  in  the  validity  of  his  large  vis- 
ion of  the  future,  and  yet  never  losing  his  sense 
of  precisely  what  could  be  attempted  and  accom- 
plished at  any  given  moment,  men  and  things  be- 
ing what  they  were.  By  his  aid  the  first  amounts 
were  raised  without  much  trouble,  — for  the  Chi- 
cago and  Aurora  was  an  undoubted  bargain  ;  but 
in  the  next  few  years,  as  it  became  plain  that 
the  road  was  destined  to  be,  not  a  local  feeder 
of  the  Michigan  Central,  but  part  of  a  trunk  line 
between  Chicago  and  the  Mississippi,  he  was 
drafted  for  heavier  work  than  that  of  "  follow- 
ing the  lead"  of  others.  It  was  the  story  of  the 
Michigan  Central  over  again,  only  the  pace  was 
more  rapid.  The  Chicago  and  Aurora  and  the 
connecting^  road  to  the  west  —  the  Central  Mili- 
tary  Tract  —  were  in  1856  combined  ^  under 
the  name  of  the  Chicago,  Burlington  and  Quincy, 

'  The  Chicago  and  Aurora  had  become  the  Chicago,  Bur- 
lington and  Quincy  in  1855. 


RAILROAD  BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  77 

the  Western  management  being  in  the  hands  of 
James  F.  Joy.  It  presently  became  clear  that  the 
roads  farther  west,  building  from  Galesburg 
toward  Burlington  and  toward  Quincy,  could 
not,  with  local  management,  command  the  neces- 
sary resources  to  enable  them  to  reach  the  Mis- 
sissippi in  any  sort  of  season.  The  C.  B.  &  Q. 
directors,  therefore,  in  order  to  hold  their  own 
against  the  Rock  Island,  which  had  already 
crossed  the  state,  voted  money  to  complete  the 
construction  of  the  two  roads.  The  whole  thing 
was  so  much  in  the  future,  and  to  outsiders  ap- 
peared so  vast  and  so  uncertain,  that  the  addi- 
tional sums  had  to  come  chiefly  from  the  men 
who  were  already  involved.  Thus,  in  order  to 
take  his  director's  share  in  one  of  these  loans, 
Forbes  sold  at  70  $100,000  of  manufacturing 
stock  which  he  had  bought  at  par.  At  another 
time  he  had,  alone,  to  endorse  notes  to  the  amount 
of  $60,000  to  pay  for  the  first  ten  locomotives 
needed  by  the  Peoria  and  Oquawka  and  the 
Northern  Cross. 

Fortunately  the  return  on  this  heavy  invest- 
ment was  both  large  and  immediate.  Plenty  of 
business  was  waiting  for  the  new  road  at  the 
Mississippi  River,  and  until  the  completion  of  the 
Chicago  branch  of  the  Illinois  Central  it  also 
served  as  the  connecting  link  between  the  main 
line  and  Chicago.  It  is  small  wonder,  then,  that 


78  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

in  SIX  months  of  1856  the  Central  Military  Tract 
paid  fifteen  per  cent  dividends  in  cash  and  stock, 
and  that  Forbes  was  able  to  write  of  the  C.  B. 
&  Q.  :  "  Their  earnings  are  so  large  that  if  they 
accumulate  them  and  then  divide  largely,  it  may 
have  a  bad  effect  among  the  country  people  who 
pay  them  freight/' 

This,  indeed,  was  the  time  of  glad,  confident 
morning,  never  again  to  occur  in  the  history  of 
railroad-building  in  the  United  States.  None  the 
less,  while  no  one  exceeded  Forbes  in  faith  in  the 
future  of  western  railroads,  yet  the  loose  man- 
agement invited  by  such  rapid  building  consti- 
tuted a  danger  which  few  saw  so  clearly  as  he. 
Extracts  from  letters  written  during  this  period, 
chiefly  to  foreign  investors,  reveal  how  large  a 
part  this  danger  played  in  his  view  of  the  situa- 
tion as  a  whole. 

You  may  mark  out  projects  without  number 
(in  the  free  states),  all  of  which,  if  honestly  and 
carefully  managed,  will  be  profitable ;  but  while 
there  are  a  hundred  good  projects,  you  will  find 
it  hard  to  choose  ten  men  to  manage  them  who 
are  free  from  some  back  interest,  which  they  are 
likely  to  consult  before  that  of  their  company,  or, 
if  you  find  honest  men,  how  few  skilful,  good 
business  men  will  there  be  in  the  hundred  ?  I 
must  try  to  find  a  cutting  from  our  papers  show- 
ing a  sharp  trick  put  upon  some  of  your  iron  men, 


RAILROAD   BUILDING   IN  ILLINOIS  79 

it  is  said  by  the  Rock  Island  Co.  (a  kind  of  bas- 
tard child  o£  the  Southern  Michigan).  The  story 
is  this. 

Your  iron  men  wanted  half  cash  and  half 
bonds.  So  the  Rock  Island  bought  double  quan- 
tity of  iron  and  sold  half  of  it,  to  raise  the  cash 
to  pay  for  the  other  half.  If  not  true,  't  is  very 
likely  to  be. 

My  wonder  has  been,  not  that  your  conserva- 
tive people  would  not  trust  Michigan  Central  and 
the  few  such  companies,  but  that  they  would 
trust  others  of  whom  they  know  so  little.  I  am 
naturally  sanguine,  and  I  fully  appreciate  the 
growth  and  capabilities  of  the  West ;  but  if  I 
had  money  seeking  investment  at  two  per  cent, 
I  would  not  touch  some  of  the  six  or  eight  per 
cent  things  that  your  cautious  English  houses 
have  taken  hold  of  .^ 

There  are  two  ways  of  getting  stock  taken  here. 
One  is  to  convince  people  that  a  road  will  pay 
handsomely  and  that  all  the  stockholders  will  pay 
up  in  cash,  and  share  alike.  The  other  is  to  get 
victims  (cities  or  individuals)  to  subscribe  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  stock  which  is  bound  to  be  sacri- 
ficed, and  then,  in  the  shape  of  contracts,  at 
double  what  the  work  is  worth,  payable  in  stock, 
bonds,  etc.,  get  people  to  take  hold  who  expect 
to  get  so  much  advantage  in  the  price  of  their 
work  or  materials  as  to  enable  them  to  sell  out 
their  stock  at  a  sacrifice,  and  still  get  off  with 
some  profit.^ 

1  April  1,  1853.  3  July  11, 1851. 


80  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

"  Whether  such  a  crisis  [bankruptcy]  will  ever 
come  with  the  Erie  I  cannot  judge.  I  know 
they  must  want  a  good  deal  of  money  to  stock 
and  to  finish  it  after  it  is  nominally  done ;  and 
through  the  wild  parts  of  the  country  it  will  not 
at  first  pay  current  expenses  and  repairs.  For 
data,  you  may,  I  suppose,  rely  upon  the  gross 
receipts ;  but  whether  you  can  tell  anything  of 
the  net  earnings  depends  entirely  upon  the  kind 
of  people  who  manage  it.  They  may  be  blunder- 
ing and  stupid,  or  theoretical  and  experimental ; 
they  may  be  sharp  people  who  manage  economi- 
cally, but  who  don't  think  the  stockholders  and 
the  public  ought  to  know  how  much  it  costs  to 
keep  a  road  and  its  equipment  up,  and  who  for 
the  present  conceal  some  of  the  running  expenses 
under  the  head  of  construction,  trusting  to  a 
great  rush  of  business  when  the  road  is  through 
to  cover  up  all  weak  spots. 

I  know  nothing  at  all  about  the  managers ;  but  I 
do  know  that  a  judicious,  economical,  square-sided 
management  is  as  rare  as  a  first-rate  commission 
agent ;  and  rather  more  so,  for  the  pay  of  rail- 
road people  is  fixed,  while  the  commission  mer- 
chant has  a  direct  interest  in  being  prompt  and 
careful. 

So  much  for  a  treatise  on  railroads,  and  which 
is  in  reply  to  your  remark  that  the  first  seven  or 
eight  millions  of  Erie  ought  to  be  good.^ 

In  this  experimental  state  of  things,  a  final 
obstacle  to  the  orderly  upbuilding  of  a  system  of 

»  March  26,  1851. 


RAILROAD  BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  81 

Western  railroads  was  the  lavish  extension  of 
Federal  aid ;  for  with  the  land  grants  in  1850  to 
the  Illinois  Central  and  the  Mobile  and  Ohio, 
Congress  had  let  down  the  bars.  The  need  of 
developing  the  interior  of  Iowa  and  Missouri, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  importance  of  building  a 
"  Pacific  Railroad"  from  this  or  that  insignificant 
town  on  the  Mississippi,  could  be  urged  plausibly, 
and  any  application  to  aid  such  a  scheme  Con- 
gress was  now  likely  to  act  on  favorably. 

These  prospects  of  railroad-building  made  easy 
portended  serious  things  to  the  men  interested 
in  the  Michigan  Central  and  the  C.  B.  &  Q. 
Having  constructed  roads  successfully  with  their 
own  resources,  they  could  not  but  object  to  a 
scheme  which  would  force  them  into  ruinous 
competition  with  roads  having  the  advantage  of 
government  aid.  The  perils  to  roads  of  the 
former  class  are  put  with  some  energy  in  a  re- 
monstrance addressed  by  Forbes  in  February, 
1853,  to  Charles  Sumner,  United  States  senator 
from  Massachusetts. 

There  are  now  about  7500  miles  of  new  rail- 
road in  course  of  construction,  which  when  pro- 
perly equipped  with  machinery,  shops,  and  depots, 
and  finished  with  proper  ballast  and  bridges,  will 
not  cost  under  $20,000  per  mile,  or  say  $150, 
000,000  —  one  hundred  and  fifty  millions  — 
(and  this  is  a  low  estimate),  most  of  which  has 


82  AN   AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

to  be  borrowed  and  the  whole  expended  within 
two  years.  These  are  chiefly  in  the  West  through 
a  sparse  population. 

Is  not  the  experiment  enough  for  one  while? 
and,  however  sound  the  policy  may  be  of  giving 
lands  to  make  railways,  is  it  wise  to  stimulate  enter- 
prise in  this  direction  any  further,  at  a  time  when 
it  is  clear  that  too  many  roads  are  under  way 
without  any  such  stimulus  ? 

If  the  western  states  go  much  further  or  faster 
into  railways,  we  shall  inevitably  have  another 
1837-38,  as  well  as  an  1835-36 ;  and,  like  that 
epoch,  the  stimulated,  overstrained  effort  will 
be  followed  by  a  state  of  reaction  that  will  be 
very  unfavorable  to  the  real  interests  of  the  West. 
By  stimulating  the  building  of  roads,  where  they 
are  not  wanted,  and  where  the  leading  cause  for 
building  them  is  the  gift  of  public  lands,  we 
shall  throw  such  discredit  (when  the  break-down 
comes)  on  our  western  roads,  that  the  building 
of  useful  roads  will  be  retarded  or  indefinitely 
postponed. 

Foreign  capitalists,  as  I  happen  to  know,  are 
already  frightened  by  the  immense  extent  of  the 
new  railroads  begun,  and  the  time  is  very  near 
at  hand  when  the  enormous  issues  of  railway 
bonds  will  glut  the  home  market.   .  .   . 

It  is  possible  that  I  may  be  influenced  by  my 
connection  with  western  roads  that  have  been 
built  by  dint  of  hard  work  in  hard  times,  when 
it  was  a  word  of  reproach  to  be  concerned  in 
western  enterprises,  and  that  these  considera- 
tions induce  me  to  look  unfavorably  upon  other 


RAILROAD   BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  83 

roads  getting  help  from  the  public  Treasury  or 
domain. 

To  avoid  such  suspicion,  I  mark  this  letter 
private  and  do  not  wish  my  name  mentioned  in 
the  matter ;  but  you,  I  know,  will  have  candor 
enough  and  acuteness  enough  to  give  due  weight 
to  any  of  my  reasoning  that  is  good,  and  to  make 
the  needful  allowance  for  any  selfish  bias,  as 
against  the  weight  that  might  otherwise  be  due 
to  the  opinions  of  one  who  has  had  some  expe- 
rience in  western  railroad-building.^ 

In  the  midst  of  the  clamor  of  the  West  for 
more  land  for  more  railroads,  such  a  protest 
naturally  received  little  heed.  Yielding  to  this 
clamor,  Congress  passed  land-grant  acts  in  1852, 
1853,  1856,  and  1857,  on  an  increasing  scale  of 
lavishness.  Nothing  short  of  a  panic,  with  its 
imperative  "  thus  far  and  no  farther,"  could  avail 
to  stay  its  reckless  hand. 

Clear  as  had  been  the  interest  of  Forbes  and 
his  friends  in  preventing,  if  possible,  these  dona- 
tions, they  could  not  afford  to  bend  over  back- 
wards by  refusing  to  have  anything  to  do  with 
the  lines  thus  favored.  Since  roads  were  now 
sure  to  be  built  across  Missouri  and  Iowa  which 
would  connect  with  their  roads  at  Quincy  and  at 
Burhngton,  it  would  be  folly  to  let  these  enter- 

1  For  the  rest  of  this  letter,  which  gives  at  length  Forbes's 
views  on  the  general  principle  of  Federal  aid  to  railroads,  see 
Appendix. 


84  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

prises  fall  into  rival  hands.  The  first  of  the  roads 
for  which  Boston  capitalists  were  thus  forced  to 
find  money  was  the  Hannibal  and  St.  Joseph 
Railroad,  a  line  some  two  hundred  miles  long, 
planned  to  cross  the  northern  part  of  Missouri 
from  the  Mississippi  to  the  Missouri  River.  Be- 
sides having  a  land  grant  of  over  600,000  acres, 
it  possessed  the  guarantee  of  the  state  for  its 
bonds  to  the  amount  of  $1,500,000.  In  spite  of 
its  auspicious  beginning,  however,  the  road  for 
some  years  made  little  progress  in  construction. 
Its  local  management  was  ineffective,  its  East- 
ern interests  were  in  the  charge  of  Forbes  who, 
overloaded  with  railroad  work,  was  beginning  to 
break  down ;  finally,  the  contract  under  which 
the  work  of  construction  was  to  be  done  was  a 
preposterous  agreement  which  enabled  the  con- 
tractor to  have  his  own  way  about  everything  all 
the  time.  For  a  number  of  years  all  that  this 
costly  investment  meant  was  that  Missouri  was 
safe  from  the  control  of  any  rival  of  the  C.  B. 
&  Q. 

Again,  in  1856,  the  bounty  of  Congress  com- 
pelled the  men  in  the  Chicago,  Burlington, 
and  Quincy  to  bestir  themselves  to  find  capital. 
Stretching  westward  from  their  terminal  at  Bur- 
lington, Iowa,  was  the  Burlington  and  Missouri — 
a  little  road  for  building  which  bonds  bearing 
ten  per  cent  interest  had  been  sold  at  sixty  cents 


RAILROAD  BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  85 

on  the  dollar,  and  wHicli,  after  four  years  of 
effort,  had  succeeded  in  struggUng  twelve  miles 
toward  the  goal  of  its  ambition,  the  western 
boundary  of  the  state.  Now  it  leaped  to  fame  by 
being  one  of  four  railroads  in  Iowa  to  receive 
land  grants,  its  allotment,  the  smallest  of  them 
all,  being  350,000  acres. ^  With  this  dowry  it 
awaited  the  overtures  of  the  East. 

Early  in  1857  Joy  appeared  in  Boston,  eager 
to  demonstrate  to  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  directors  the 
importance  of  this  Iowa  road  as  a  feeder  to  their 
line.  Forbes  himself  needed  no  convincing.  As 
far  back  as  the  summer  of  1853,  only  a  year  after 
the  Michigan  Central  had  entered  Chicago,  his 
railroad-building  imagination,  leaping  westward 
a  state  at  a  time,  had  seen  the  value  to  the  Michi- 
gan road  of  this  route  across  Iowa,  and  at  a  con- 
siderable expense  he  had  had  preliminary  surveys 
made  over  the  whole  line.  Now,  after  four  years 
of  feverish  '^  development "  in  Illinois,  Iowa's 
turn  had  come.  But  however  great  the  oppor- 
tunity here,  in  the  East  Forbes's  prophecy  of  evil 
days  was  beginning  to  be  fulfilled.  The  market 
was  glutted  with  railroad  securities,  and  the 
Boston  banking-house  of  John  E.  Thayer  and 
Brother,  on  which  he  had  always  relied,  failed 
him.    Discouragement  and  opposition,  however, 

^  The  amount  proved  to  be  389,989  acres.  —  Report  for  1897 
of  the  Commissioner  of  the  General  Land  Office,  p.  226. 


86  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

always  an  effective  stimulus  to  Forbes,  spurred 
him  to  put  the  thing  through  with  a  rush. 
To  Erastus  Corning  he  wrote  on  May  11, 
1857 :  — 

...  I  had  vowed  a  vow  to  touch  nothing 
new ;  but  the  Iowa  Road  with  its  rich  and  popu- 
lous country,  and  its  300,000  acres  o£  Free  Soil 
seems  to  me  so  very  important  an  extension  of 
our  lines  that  I  cannot  help  taking  rather  more 
than  my  share  there.  .   .  . 

Personally  I  should  not  be  sorry  to  see  it 
dropped,  as  it  may  lead  to  some  care  and  thought 
—  although  I  will  not  anyhow  nor  for  any  con- 
sideration risk  my  health  by  taking  part  in  the 
management  of  it;  but  it  would  be  as  bad  a  mistake 
for  the  companies  to  let  it  go  to  the  enemy  as  it  was 
for  us  ...  to  let  the  road  round  the  foot  of  Lake 
Michigan  go  to  warm  the  Southerners  into  life  ! 
as  bad  a  mistake  as  it  would  have  been  to  let  the 
MiUtary  Tract  and  Aurora  become  tributaries  to 
the  Rock  Island,  which  we  barely  escaped  mak- 
ing under  similar  cirmimstances, 

I  have  been  astonished  at  the  blindness  and 
lukewarmness  of  some  of  our  large  stockholders 
about  it.  The  smaller  ones  have  come  forward 
very  well  and  some  outsiders,  but  Thayer's  de- 
lay to  put  his  name  down  has  made  others  delay 
too  and  so  it  is  still  hanging  by  the  eye-lids ! 

^^  Don't  be  discouraged,"  was  his  message  to 
Joy,  ^^  because  John  E.  Thayer  has  been  upset, 


RAILROAD   BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  87 

'  there  shall  still  be  cakes  and  ale,  and  ginger 
shall  be  hot  in  the  mouth.'  I  have  in  my  eye 
another  person  in  Boston,  and  one  in  New  York, 
who  can  put  the  thing  through.  One  man  in 
New  Bedford  would  do  it  if  he  would  examine 
it.  In  short,  it  is  too  good  to  let  go  without  a 
try!" 

This  driving  energy  resulted  in  a  subscription 
of  a  million  and  a  half  of  dollars  on  the  part  of 
the  C.  B.  &  Q.  stockholders,  thanks  to  which  the 
construction  of  the  Burlington  and  Missouri 
went  on  rapidly  until  the  panic  brought  every- 
thing to  a  standstill. 

Beyond  question,  the  financing  of  Western 
railroads  in  the  fifties  was  to  be  classed  among 
occupations  as  ^^  extra  hazardous."  Not  only  were 
these  undertakings  on  a  larger  scale  than  had 
been  known  in  this  country  and  in  a  field  of  in- 
dustry the  laws  of  which  were  imperfectly  worked 
out,  but  the  greed  of  the  people  had  not  per- 
mitted for  them  a  normal  and  even  development. 
The  clamor  for  national  aid  had  increased  in 
inverse  proportion  to  the  justifiable  need  of  the  f 
district  which  made  the  demand ;  and  Congress,  1 
misguidedly  enacting  the  will  of  a  misguided 
people,  had  committed  the  supreme  act  of  de- 
moralization in  its  lavish  gifts  of  land.  Thus 
Eastern  capitalists  interested  in  Western  rail- 
roads were  obliged  to  risk  their  credit  still  fur- 


\ 


88         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

ther  and  to  make  great  sacrifices  in  protecting 
their  earlier  investments.  "  I  confess,"  wrote 
Forbes  in  the  summer  of  1856,  "  to  being  over- 
involved  and  somewhat  troubled  !  They  say  eels 
get  used  to  being  skinned !  If  so,  I  wish  I  was 
an  eel,  for  every  time  I  give  my  name  out  the 
worse  I  feel  instead  of  the  better."  It  is  not 
remarkable  that  under  the  strain  his  health  broke 
down. 

Hazardous  for  the  men  involved  such  business 
was,  but  no  less  hazardous  for  the  nation.  In 
1853  Forbes's  estimate  of  the  cost  of  7500  miles 
of  road  then  under  construction  was  $150,000,- 
000.  According  to  James  Ford  Rhodes,  "  Nearly 
21,000  miles  of  railway  were  constructed  from 
January  1,  1849,  to  January  1,  1858.  This  was 
seven  ninths  of  the  total  mileage  of  the  coun- 
try. The  capital  and  indebtedness  of  the  rail- 
roads was  about  $900,000,000,  so  that  in  nine 
years  $700,000,000  had  been  invested  in  rail- 
way construction."  ^  The  day  of  reckoning  was 
inevitable ;  and  when  it  came  in  the  late  sum- 
mer of  1857,  nothing  in  the  country  suffered 
more  severely  than  the  railroads  themselves. 
Of  the  roads  in  which  Forbes  was  interested,  the 
C.  B.  &  Q.,  two  hundred  and  ten  miles  long, 
which  had  cost  comparatively  little,  and  which 
had  been  paying  semi-annual  dividends  of  any- 

*  History  of  the  United  States,  vol.  iii,  p.  53. 


RAILROAD   BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  89 

where  from  five  to  fifteen  per  cent,  was  the  only 
one  that  was  unshaken. 

Forbes's  success  in  putting  the  Michigan  Cen- 
tral on  its  feet  after  the  panic  of  1857,  the  story 
of  which  has  already  been  told,  completed  the 
demonstration  of  his  mastery  of  railroad  finan- 
ciering. When  others  were  sore  and  disheart- 
ened, he  had  shown  himself  cool,  resourceful, 
and  inspiring.  There  had  been  no  doubting  his 
power  or  resisting  his  leadership.  Naturally 
enough,  then,  he  was  presently  called  upon  to 
help  other  roads  in  their  times  of  trouble. 

For  example,  soon  after  the  panic  the  C.  B.  & 
Q.  began  to  negotiate  for  the  complete  control 
of  the  two  western  parts  of  its  line,  extending 
from  Galesburg  to  Burlington  and  Quincy.  In 
neither  case  had  the  smaller  road,  with  its  local 
management,  worked  amicably  or  dealt  fairly 
with  the  larger ;  and  when  they  both  met  with 
disaster  and  the  bondholders  pressed  their  claims, 
such  a  consolidation  was  obviously  the  best  way 
out  of  the  situation.  In  bringing  this  result  to 
pass  Forbes  labored  long  and  hard.  Although 
legal  delays  deferred  the  completion  of  the  work, 
yet  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  these  roads 
formed  an  important  and  efficient  unit  in  the 
Illinois  railroad  system. 

In  connection  with  the  Hannibal  and  St. 
Joseph,  however,  Forbes's  power  as  a  railroad  re- 


90  AN  AMEEICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

organizer  was  more  brilliantly  shown.  When  after 
the  panic  he  was  summoned  to  set  things  going 
again,  he  found  himself  engaged  in  a  contest 
with  a  "  self-made  man,  shrewd,  hard,  and  rich," 
—  "  the  very  type  of  a  railroad  contractor,"  — 
who  wished  to  build  a  "  cheap  contractor's  road 
to  sell,"  while  Forbes  was  determined  to  have  "a 
solid  one,  adapted  to  being  held  and  used  for 
business  purposes."  Finally,  in  desperation  after 
a  "  four-months'  nightmare,"  Forbes  threatened 
to  throw  over  the  enterprise  altogether,  under 
which  pressure  the  contractor  gave  in. 

The  consequence  of  this  success  was  the  ob- 
ligation to  raise  the  million  and  a  half  of  money 
necessary  to  complete  the  road.  This  task  Forbes 
set  about  after  much  the  same  fashion  in  which 
he  had  achieved  the  sale  of  Michigan  Central 
bonds  six  months  before.  With  all  railroads  suf- 
fering from  the  depression  attendant  on  the 
panic,  it  was  a  matter  of  some  delicacy  to  put 
the  thing  in  such  shape  as  to  make  it  appeal  to 
investors.  Nevertheless,  as  Forbes  pointed  out  to 
the  men  whom  he  urged  to  join  him  in  making 
up  the  sum,  the  prospects  of  the  road,  when  once 
it  should  be  finished,  were  exceedingly  favor- 
able. 

As  to  the  Hannibal  [he  wrote  to  John  C. 
Green],  I  made  settlements  and  arrangements 
(or  the  basis  thereof)  with  the  contractor,  which 


RAILROAD   BUILDING   IN  ILLINOIS  91 

I  think  will  take  the  concern  out  of  the  fancies 
and  put  it  among  the  solids  —  provided  the  re- 
maining land-bonds  can  be  sold  at  a  fair  price. 

It  will  then  look  like  another  Michigan  Cen- 
tral, only  running  through  a  richer  country  and 
endowed  with  lands  ^hich.  prudent  people  value 
at  $6,000,000,  and  which,  at  Illinois  Central 
land  prices,  will  bring  600,000  X  $14  =  $8,400,- 
000. 

To  get  the  lands,  however,  the  road  must  be 
built  and  this  without  unreasonable  delay,  for 
with  such  a  large  interest  account  and  such  a 
moderate  amount  of  land-bonds  left  it  might  get 
embarrassed. 

I  have  satisfied  myself  that  if  the  bonds  now 
offered  can  be  sold  at  a  fair  price  the  road  can, 
with  the  proceeds,  be  opened  through  probably 
in  nine  months,  certainly  in  twelve,  and  can 
provide  for  such  part  of  its  interest  as  the  earn- 
ings will  not  take  care  of. 

The  business  of  Kansas  and  Nebraska  must 
come  over  the  road  for  years,  and  from  the 
moment  it  is  opened  a  very  large  traffic  will  pass 
over  it. 

To  compare  it  with  the  Michigan  Central.  You 
must  suppose  that  it  has  no  railroad  competition 
at  present  and  none  near  in  prospect,  while  in- 
stead of  the  three  or  four  days  of  fair  lake  navi- 
gation which  the  M.  Central  had  to  compete  with, 
it  has  the  Missouri  Eiver,  with  its  five  mile  [an 
hour]  current,  its  snags  and  sand-bars,  which 
make  the  passage  from  St.  Jo  to  St.  Louis  a 
very  uncertain  one,  varying  from  three  days,  in 


92  AN  AMERICAN  KAILROAD  BUILDER 

a  good  stage  of  water,  to  seven  days  at  other 
times.^ 


Appeals  such  as  these,  made  to  "the  right 
people/'  had  their  effect.  With  the  help  of 
Baring  Brothers  and  of  his  ever-reliable  Quaker 
friends  in  New  Bedford,  sure  to  have  money  to 
invest  in  a  good  thing  at  a  low  price  which  he 
might  have  to  offer,  Forbes' s  list  was  made  up. 
The  bonds  were  taken  at  60,  and  under  the 
strong  management  which  he  had  provided,  with 
John  W.  Brooks  at  the  head,  Forbes  felt  that 
the  road  could  now  be  left  to  take  care  of  itself. 
Early  in  1859  it  was  successfully  completed ;  the 
other  railroad  in  Missouri,  aided  at  the  same  time 
by  a  land  grant,  was  ten  years  longer  in  getting 
across  the  state. 

With  the  Burlington  and  Missouri  Railroad, 
too,  Forbes's  special  talent  was  called  into  play. 
A  time  when  the  Iowa  farmers  were  hauling 
their  grain  twenty-five  miles  to  the  Mississippi 
River  because  they  were  too  poor  to  pay  the  rail- 
road for  carrying  it,  and  when  the  business  of  the 
road  was  at  a  standstill,  was  for  him  precisely  the 
time  for  action.  No  sooner  was  the  loan  for 
the  Hannibal  and  St.  Joseph  accomplished  in 
the  summer  of  1858,  than  he  bestirred  him.self 
to  form  a  group  to  subscribe  for  the  Iowa  road. 

»  June  30,  1858. 


RAILROAD   BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  93 

His  now  assured  financial  leadership  made  this 
third  attempt  an  easy  matter,  and  the  bonds  were 
taken  at  the  same  rate  as  those  of  the  second  loan. 
With  the  money  thus  obtained,  the  road  was  built  . 
the  seventy-five  miles  to  Ottumwa,  that  being  the 
distance  necessary  to  secure  the  land  grant. 

For  lack  of  similar  resources  in  courage  and 
cash,  the  other  three  Iowa  roads  aided  by  Con- 
gress at  the  same  time  as  the  Burlington  and 
Missouri,  and  aided  much  more  munificently, 
were  forced  to  the  wall,  and  two  of  them  for- 
feited their  land  grants.  Thus,  thanks  to  Forbes, 
both  the  Hannibal  and  St.  Joseph  and  the  Bur- 
lington and  Missouri  had  all  the  advantage  of 
having  been  built  in  a  period  of  low  prices,  — 
labor  in  Missouri  was  worth  from  seventy  to 
eighty  cents  a  day,  —  and  were  ready  to  profit 
by  the  very  beginnings  of  the  prosperity  which 
had  already  set  in  when  the  Civil  War  broke  out. 

These  long  labors  of  rehabilitation  and  reor- 
ganization after  the  panic  of  1857  constitute  the 
best  commentary  on  the  value  of  Forbes's  warn- 
ing in  1853  concerning  the  evil  of  land  grants. 
It  is  true  that  the  grants  accelerated  the  develop- 
ment of  certain  states ;  and  if  acceleration  of 
development  is  in  itself  a  benefit,  that  much  is 
to  be  put  to  their  credit.  As  for  the  aid  to  the 
railroads,  the  need  of  which  was  so  plausibly 
urged,  whatever  gain  accrued  there  was  confined 


94  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

chiefly  to  those  systems  that  were  large  and 
powerful  enough  to  have  got  along  without  it. 
The  many  local  roads  that  the  grants  brought 
into  existence  or  maintained  in  a  semblance  of 
life  could  not  command  men  of  sufficient  ability, 
honesty,  and  financial  resources  to  avail  them- 
selves of  the  advantage  thus  given  them.  Even 
the  Illinois  Central,  with  its  auspicious  beginning, 
encountered  misfortune  twice  in  the  first  seven 
years  of  its  life.  When,  on  the  other  hand,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  roads  dominated  by  the  C.  B.  &  Q. 
interests,  the  land  grants  were  managed  with  care 
and  foresight,  they  ultimately  sold  at  prices  av- 
eraging nearly  ten  times  the  original  value  of 
the  land.  So  in  the  end  the  result  was  exactly 
the  opposite  of  what  Congress  had  intended. 

Nevertheless,  for  this  advantage  at  the  start 
the  railroads  that  benefited  have  since  paid 
heavily.  In  1907,  the  Illinois  Central  had,  ac- 
cording to  the  terms  under  which  the  grant  was 
made,  turned  into  the  state  treasury  $27,000,000, 
representing  seven  per  cent  on  its  gross  earnings. 
Its  annual  payment  was  $1,200,000.^  Moreover 
since  1875,  by  act  of  Congress,  the  compensation 
of  the  "land-grant"  railroads,  for  carrying  the 
mails  has  been  only  eighty  per  cent  of  the  regu- 
lar rates  for  that  service.  Thus  for  the  390,000 

1  Address  of  William  C.  Brown  to  the  Commercial  Club  of 
Boston,  December  7,  1908,  p.  6. 


RAILROAD   BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  95 

acres  of  land  in  Iowa  received  by  the  Burlington 
and  Missouri,  there  has  been  paid  out  between 
three  and  four  times  the  original  cost  of  the  land, 
and  the  annual  loss  on  the  carrying  of  the  mails 
is  nearly  $100,000.  It  is  such  facts  as  these  that 
have  made  the  railroad  problem  in  the  Middle 
West  so  persistently  complicated. 

With  his  success  in  putting  into  good  condi- 
tion the  roads  which  constituted  western  exten- 
sions of  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  system,  the  first  period  of 
John  M.  Forbes's  career  as  a  railroad  builder 
came  to  an  end.  Covering  the  years  from  1846 
to  1860,  it  was,  in  its  general  limits,  coincident 
both  in  time  and  in  place  with  an  important 
epoch  in  the  development  of  the  railroad  system 
of  the  country.  The  Western  roads  built  in  these 
years  were,  in  the  nature  of  things,  speculative 
undertakings,  for  which  men  would  not  risk 
money  except  in  the  hope  of  large  profits.  Some- 
times these  profits  came  through  participation 
in  generously  estimated  construction  contracts, 
sometimes  in  ways  still  less  creditable,  even  to 
downright  dishonesty.  On  the  other  hand,  when 
men  of  integrity  were  in  charge,  their  returns 
must  come  from  high  rates  of  interest  on  money 
lent,  and  from  the  earnings  of  the  road.  Con- 
sequently it  was  their  policy  to  build  out  into 
regions  where  competing  lines  were  not  for  some 
years  likely  to  be  constructed,  and  where  the 


96  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

tariffs  could  be  kept  at  a  remunerative  figure.  In 
this  latter  class,  John  M.  Forbes  was  among  the 
few  foremost. 

Successful  as  speculations  though  Forbes's 
railroad  undertakings  proved,  this  fact  should 
not  so  occupy  the  foreground  that  his  great  quali- 
ties of  imagination  and  leadership  are  not  seen 
in  their  true  proportion.  Filled  with  the  vision 
of  a  land  made  populous  and  rich  through  a 
means  of  transportation  as  yet  in  its  infancy, 
he  was  also  endowed  with  the  personal  qualities 
which  could  help  largely  to  bring  that  vision  to 
pass.  Furthermore,  in  the  excitement  of  that  era, 
he  was  among  the  few  men  who  by  their  cool- 
ness and  resoluteness  could  command  the  con- 
fidence of  others ;  thus,  when  the  crash  came  and 
the  land  was  strewn  with  wrecks  of  railroads,  his 
undertakings  stood  out,  not  only  undamaged, 
but  sounder  than  ever  before. 

To  comprehend  fully  the  character  of  Forbes's 
railroad  work,  one  must  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact 
that  he  came  in  touch  with  the  actual  property 
not  oftener  than  once  a  year,  when  he  journeyed 
to  the  annual  stockholders'  meeting  at  Detroit  or 
Chicago.  To  be  sure,  with  his  remarkable  fac- 
ulty of  observation,  he  probably  saw  more  in  ten 
days  than  most  men  would  have  taken  in  in  three 
months'  time ;  but  even  so  the  nature  of  his  work 


RAILROAD  BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  97 

made  this  kind  of  knowledge  comparatively  un- 
important. His  task  was,  first  of  all,  to  stand  for 
such  principles  and  policies,  to  show  such  alert- 
ness and  energy,  as  should  win  him  the  aid  of 
the  men  whose  money  was  needed  to  finance  his 
schemes;  and,  second,  to  choose  and,  having 
chosen,  to  keep  in  touch  with  the  executive  offi.- 
cials  on  whose  steady  courage  and  skill  the  pro- 
sperity of  the  enterprise  depended.  The  material 
that  he  wrought  with  was  therefore  first,  last,  and 
always  men.  A  railroad  is  in  so  imposing  a  fashion 
a  mechanism  of  things,  that  one  is  all  too  likely 
to  forget  the  mind  and  spirit  which  are  needed 
to  inform  it.  With  Forbes  that  was  never  the 
case.  For  all  its  complicated  body,  a  railroad  was 
to  him  a  mighty  discipline,  requiring  and  re- 
sponding to  the  human  touch  of  a  master  hand. 
He  felt  the  system  of  which  he  was  a  part,  with 
its  bodies  of  stockholders,  bondholders,  directors, 
its  administrative  officials,  and  the  thousand 
subordinates  in  charge  of  the  details  of  its  oper- 
ation, —  he  felt  it  all  as  a  huge  piece  of  human 
machinery,  and  with  him  the  stress  was  always 
on  the  adjective. 

This  sense  of  the  fitness  of  men,  which  is  might- 
ily more  satisfying  than  the  sense  of  the  fitness 
of  things,  showed  itself  in  a  hundred  cases,  of 
w^hich  one  of  the  earliest  and  most  interesting  is 
that  of  his  relations  with  John  W.  Brooks,  the 


98  AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

first  superintendent  of  the  Michigan  Central. 
From  the  time  when,  an  unknown  young  engineer 
of  twenty-six,  he  made  his  first  report  to  Forbes 
on  the  value  of  the  property  as  an  investment, 
Brooks  shouldered  each  new  responsibility  with 
ease  and  success.  Without  him  at  Detroit,  full  of 
resoluteness,  a  master  of  detail,  the  road  could  not 
possibly  have  prospered.  To  the  value  of  Brooks's 
work  Forbes  was  never  weary  of  bearing  witness. 
''  The  more  I  see,"  he  wrote  in  1852,  "  of  the  diffi- 
culty of  getting  good  managers  for  other  roads 
and  other  large  things,  the  more  am  I  satisfied 
with  Brooks.  He  doubtless  has  his  faults,  and 
one  of  them  is  to  want  to  do  too  much  himself,  in- 
stead of  throwing  off  details  upon  a  subordinate, 
and  thus  giving  him  more  time  for  the  general 
management ;  but  he  makes  up  for  it  by  his  in- 
dustry and  decision,  and  certainly  combines  all 
the  qualities  we  want,  more  nearly  than  anybody 
else  in  this  country.  In  fact,  if  we  could  have 
the  best  railroad  president  and  the  best  superin- 
tendent, —  each  picked  out  among  all  the  rail- 
road companies  here,  I  think  Brooks  would  be 
worth  the  two/^ 

Again,  in  December,  1854,  Forbes  tells  the 
story  of  Brooks's  victory  in  finishing  the  Sault 
Ste.  Marie  Canal,  —  an  undertaking  for  which 
the  contractors  were  paid  with  750,000  acres  of 
the  richest  lumber  and  mineral  land  in  the  State 


RAILROAD  BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  99 

of  Michigan  valued  at  $1.33  an  acre.  "He  is  a 
perfect  Napoleon  in  his  way  and  has  had  more 
to  contend  with,  a  hundred  times  more  difficulty 
this  summer  than  Raglan  and  Canrobert  [in  the 
Crimea]  put  together.  With  1500  men  of  the 
roughest  sort  in  the  wilderness,  nobody  to  lean 
on,  the  cholera  raging  round  him,  and  the  work 
of  two  years  to  be  driven  through  in  six  months. 
He  lost  more  than  a  tenth  part  of  his  force  by 
cholera,  but  by  dint  of  will  he  has  got  the  canal 
so  far  on  that  it  can  be  done  amply  within  the 
time  required." 

Forbes's  power  of  appreciating  men  was  not 
limited  to  praising  them  for  what  they  had  done 
brilliantly ;  he  could  reach  their  sympathy  by 
putting  himself  on  common  ground  with  them 
in  difficulties  and  disappointments.  Here  are 
extracts  from  a  letter  written  to  a  young  man 
who,  sent  out  to  Hannibal  to  watch  the  construc- 
tion of  the  Hannibal  and  St.  Joseph,  had  been 
condemned  to  do  little  but  mark  time. 

I  can  easily  conceive  of  your  disappointment, 
after  two  years  of  waiting,  at  any  further  delay, 
and  your  chief  mistake  has  been  in  not  putting 
the  blame  where  it  really  belongs,  on  my  shoul- 
ders/or the  two  years  instead  of  expecting  Mr.  C. 
in  the  few  days  he  was  out  there  to  apply  the  axe 
to  the  root  and  remedy  the  evils  of  two  years'  in- 
action at  a  blow.  He  does  not  do  things  exactly 


100         AN  AMERICAN   RAILROAD  BUILDER 

in  my  ivay  but  it  is  a  blessed  thing  in  this  world 
that  people  are  not  all  alike.  .  .  . 

I  think  you  were  too  quick  in  taking  offence 
because  Mr.  C.  would  not  within  24  or  48  hours 
after  he  had  engaged  07ie  man  who  was  not  there 
ready  to  take  hold,  get  rid  of  your  drunken 
friend  whom  we  by  Mr.  Duff's  advice  had  en- 
dured for  many  months.  Had  you  kept  cool  then 
until  the  Directors  could  act,  it  would  have 
been  better,  instead  of  insisting  as  a  right  upon 
instant  action  in  the  direction  which  you  thought 
expedient.   .  .  . 

But  let  bygones  be  bygones !  I  have  no  time 
for  useless  argument  and  you  must  be  content 
with  the  assurance  that  all  of  us,  including  Capt. 
Swift,  have  the  highest  appreciation  of  your  char- 
acter and  motives,  without  expecting  us  to  be- 
lieve that  you  may  not  have  been  and  may  not 
be  again  more  impetuous  than  the  Capt.  himself 
would  be  under  like  circumstances. 

Pray  do  not  think  of  turning  your  hand  from 
the  plough  now  !  no  great  enterprise  ever  goes 
without  great  discouragements  and  perplexities. 

I  fully  appreciate  the  fact  that  we  cannot  man- 
age H.  and  St.  Jo.  by  telegraph.  But  with  you 
there  in  whom  we  have  perfect  confidence  we 
can.  .  .  . 

I  protest  however  against  your  plan  of  having 
every  thing  ahead  settled  now.  Remember  the 
fable  of  the  clock  that  thought  it  was  overworked 
because  it  besran  to  calculate  the  immense  num- 
her  of  ticks  to  be  struck  in  a  year !  There  are 
only  60  seconds  in  a  minute.  Let  us  get  our  ma- 


RAILROAD  BUILDING   IN  "iLI.U^OiS  101 

chinerj  a-going  and  then  if  it  won't  tick  the  60 
we  must  apply  the  remedy  after  a  fair  trial.  Hunt 
may  not  be  the  man,  and  after  all  it  depends  on 
the  man.  .  .  . 

One  word  more.  If  things  don't  go  exactly 
right,  remember  that  with  new  men  at  t^e  head 
and  with  my  help  rather  weak,  it  is  not  so  easy  to 
remedy  any  evils  as  if  we  were  all  near  together ; 
but  our  interests  are  as  nearly  common  as  it  is 
possible  to  be,  and  if  we  at  this  end  are  not  so 
rapid  as  lightning,  we  are  persevering  and  have 
some  experience,  and  with  honest  aims  we  shall 
get  things  right  after  a  while. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  imagine  the  feelings  of 
the  recipient  of  this  letter  as  he  read  its  mingled 
praise  and  blame ;  it  is  impossible  not  to  believe 
that  he  set  to  work  with  a  warmer  heart  and  re- 
newed loyalty  for  the  chief  who  could  also  be  a 
counsellor  and  friend. 

As  the  course  of  years  showed  more  and  more 
plainly  the  complicated  nature  of  railroad  work, 
Forbes  was  always  on  the  lookout  for  young  men 
of  promise  who,  by  starting  at  the  bottom  and 
growing  up  with  the  business,  would  be  masters 
of  its  details.  Concerning  "young  Choate,  who 
thinks  of  settling  in  the  West,"  Forbes  wrote  to 
the  president  of  the  C.  B.  &  Q.,  "he  is  nephew 
or  cousin  of  the  Choate,  and  is  said  to  be  a  fine 
fellow;  graduated  high  in  his  class  two  or  three 
years  ago ;  and  I  have  thought  it  possible  that 


102         AN  "A^lkRtCfAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

you  might  consider  it  good  policy  to  encourage 
him  to  settle  in  Chicago,  and  try  to  train  him  up 
to  be  useful  to  us." 

"  There  is  great  need  of  good  trustworthy 
business  men  for  the  management  of  our  rail- 
roads/' he  wrote  to  a  young  relative  of  nineteen, 
recommending  him  to  apply  for  a  place  on  the 
Burlington  and  Missouri.  "  If  you  can  fit  your- 
self to  manage  such  matters  well,  you  can  be 
more  useful  in  that  line  than  any  other." 

The  motive  of  policy  which  was  behind  these 
offers  is  stated  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  in  which  he 
asked  for  help  in  finding  a  place  for  "  young  Mr. 
Higginson."  "  Sometimes  these  educated  boys 
who  have  to  work  with  their  hands  turn  up 
trumps.  At  any  rate  they  are  a  cheap  experiment 
when  willing  to  work  for  a  small  pay.  I  think 
the  mistake  we  have  made  on  our  K.  Rd.  lines 
was  in  not  bringing  up  youngsters  we  know  some- 
thing about  as  foremast  hands,  for  the  chance  o£ 
picking  out  good  mates  and  captains  just  as  the 
old-fashioned  shipowners  used  to  do  in  taking 
green  hands  at  six  dollars  a  month.  It  is  true 
they  were  called  the  '  owner's  hard  bargains  with 
sharp  teeth  and  soft  hands,'  but  out  of  them  we 
used  to  get  enough  good  men  to  pay  for  the  larger 
portion  of  good-for-nothings." 

Rarely,  however,  was  Forbes's  judgment  of 
men  in  error.  "  Young  Choate"  has  won  a  fame 


RAILROAD   BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS  103 

-which,  though  not  connected  with  raiboads,  is 
none  the  less  distinguished.  The  lad  of  nineteen, 
Charles  E.  Perkins,  who  went  to  Burlington  as 
clerk  with  a  salary  of  thirty  dollars  a  month,  sur- 
passed every  expectation.  He  became  Forbes's 
right-hand  man  in  the  second  period  of  his  rail- 
road career,  and  succeeded  him  as  president  of 
the  great  C.  B.  &  Q.  system.  And  so  in  dozens 
of  other  cases  Forbes  fitted  the  man  to  the 
work. 

One  other  instance  of  Forbes's  keenness  in 
searching  out  young  men  of  promise  and  his 
power  of  attaching  them  to  himself  by  the  bonds 
of  human  sympathy  and  interest  in  a  common 
work  is  especially  moving.  Charles  Russell 
Lowell,  who  had  graduated  from  Harvard  in 
1855  at  the  age  of  twenty,  first  in  his  class,  was 
employed  after  his  graduation  by  Forbes  in  his 
of&ce  in  Boston.  From  the  beginning  the  two 
men  were  drawn  to  each  other.  Though  Lowell's 
bringing  up  and  his  natural  tastes  drew  him 
toward  the  culture  of  which  his  famous  uncle  is 
the  best  American  type,  the  energy  of  his  spirit 
drew  him  to  action  in  the  world  of  industry.  Hav- 
ing proved  himself,  he  was  sent  to  be  assistant 
treasurer  of  the  Burlington  and  Missouri  Rail- 
road, then  just  achieving  its  seventy-five  miles  of 
length.  The  rough  river  town  of  Burlington  was 
his  home  for  two  years,  a  period  long  enough  for 


104        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

him  to  study  and  to  master  the  business  of  rail- 
roading, and  to  make  his  clearness  and  force  felt 
everywhere  in  the  service.  In  his  leisure  he  read 
Kant  and  the  recently  published  writings  of 
Darwin. 

Such  an  impression  of  promise  and  ability  did 
Lowell  make  upon  George  Ashburner,  an  English 
capitalist  travelling  in  the  West  whom  Forbes 
had  asked  him  to  entertain,  that  the  young  man 
found  himself  face  to  face  with  an  alluring  offer 
of  a  place  in  Calcutta.  Resisting  this  for  family 
reasons,  and  yielding  to  what  he  himself  named 
the  "  call  of  iron,"  he  went  to  take  charge  of  the 
Mount  Savage  Iron  Works,  a  difficult  piece  of 
property  in  the  mountains  of  Maryland,  in  which 
Forbes  had  an  interest.  Here  the  opening  of  the 
war  found  Lowell,  and  yielding  himself  to  the 
higher  call  of  the  nation,  he  served  with  distinc- 
tion as  a  cavalry  officer.  After  a  brilliant  cam- 
paign in  the  Shenandoah  Valley  he  fell  in  Sher- 
idan's charge  at  Cedar  Creek. 

The  point  here,  however,  is  not  the  career 
which  this  young  man  made  for  himself  in  his 
twenty-nine  years  of  life,  but  the  sure  instinct 
and  strong  feeling  with  which  the  older  man  re- 
garded the  younger.  Writing  to  Ashburner  just 
after  LoAvell's  death,  Forbes  was  able  to  put  this 
feeling  into  words:  ^^One  of  the  strange  things 
has  been  how  he  magnetized  you  and  me   at 


RAILROAD  BUILDING  IN  ILLINOIS         105 

first  sight !  We  are  both  practical,  unsentimen- 
tal, and  perhaps  hard,  at  least  externally,  yet 
he  captivated  me  just  as  he  did  you,  and  I  came 
home  and  told  my  wife  I  had  fallen  in  love;  and 
from  that  day  I  never  saw  anything  too  good  or 
too  high  for  him,  —  more  knowledge  confirming 
first  impressions.  But  he  is  gone,  and  leaves  us 
only  memory  of  a  genius  departed." 

Such  a  sense  of  human  relationship  is  best 
understood  when  we  see  the  strength  of  the  re- 
turn current  which  it  created.  This  is  expressed 
in  a  letter  of  the  young  soldier's  to  his  fiancee, 
who  was  a  relative  of  Forbes.  ^'  Do  you  know 
that   after    Chancellorsville    he  [Forbes]   wrote 
[from  London]  that  he  had  more  than  half  a 
mind  to  come  home  at  once  to  help  to  raise  a 
new  army,  and  if  necessary  to  take  a  musket  him- 
self ?  .  .  .  I  wonder  whether  my  theories  about 
self-culture,  etc.,  would  ever  have  been  modified 
so  much  —  whether  I  should  ever  have  seen  what 
a  necessary  failure  they  lead  to  —  had  it  not 
been  for  this  war :  7iow,  I  feel  every  day,  more 
and  more,  that  a  man  has  no  right  to  himself  at 
all ;  that  indeed  he  can  do  nothing  useful  unless 
he  recognizes  this  clearly ;  nothing  has  helped 
me  to  see  this  last  truth  more  than  watching  Mr. 
Forbes.  I  think  he  is  one  of  the  most  unselfish 
workers  I  ever  knew  of ;  it  is  painful  here  to  see 
how  sadly  personal  motives  interfere  with  most 


106         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

of  our  officers*  usefulness.  After  the  war  how 
much  there  will  be  to  do ;  and  how  little  oppor- 
tunity a  fellow  in  the  field  has  to  prepare  himself 
for  the  sort  of  doing  that  will  be  required.  It 
makes  me  quite  sad  sometimes ;  but  then  I  think 
of  cousin  John,  and  remember  how  much  he  al- 
ways manages  to  do  in  every  direction  without 
any  previous  preparation,  simply  by  pitching  in, 
honestly  and  entirely  —  and  I  reflect  that  the 
great  secret  of  doing  after  all,  is  in  seeing  what 
is  to  be  done/'^ 

These  instances  constitute  further  evidence  to 
prove  how  completely  with  Forbes  the  value  of 
the  deed  lay  in  the  quality  of  the  man  behind  it. 
In  the  power  to  perceive  and  to  act  upon  this 
truth  dwelt  the  secret  of  his  success  as  a  railroad 
financier. 

^  Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Russell  Lowellf  p.  258. 


CHAPTER  IV 

PUBLIC     SERVICE 

THE  exigencies  of  the  business  undertakings 
in  which  Forbes  engaged  made  it  from  the 
first  impossible  for  him  to  accept  a  mercantile 
career  which  should  consist  merely  of  travelling 
his  own  chosen  road,  wearing  the  blinders  of  self- 
interest.  His  training  under  Houqua,  with  its 
mixture  of  commerce,  politics,  and  diplomacy, 
had  taught  him,  before  he  was  twenty,  to  see  the 
bearing  of  each  act  of  private  enterprise  from 
the  public  as  well  as  from  the  individual  point 
of  view;  and  the  story  of  his  early  railroad  work 
has  shown  how  habitual  it  was  with  him  to  look 
around  as  well  as  ahead.  As  a  consequence  of 
this  habit,  there  is  to  Forbes's  credit  a  record  of 
disinterested  participation  in  national  affairs  for 
a  period  of  over  thirty  years.  It  includes  four 
years  of  intense  activity  during  the  Civil  War, 
to  the  exclusion  of  almost  all  private  business ; 
after  that  a  long^  term  of  service  in  the  councils 
of  the  Republican  party;  and  finally,  a  sturdy 
declaration  of  independence  of  machine  politics. 
As  he  himself  saw  it,  all  this  was  merely  a  con- 
tribution of  necessary  work  from  a  plain  citizen, 


108         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

who  did  his  duty,  as  Charles  Lowell  said  of  him, 
"  simply  by  pitching  in,  honestly  and  entirely." 
From  the  external  point  of  view,  it  is  a  concrete 
showing  of  the  important  part  played,  in  the  sum 
total  of  events  that  make  up  history,  by  the  im- 
pulse of  individual  initiative. 

Forbes,  on  his  return  from  China,  took  his 
place  among  Boston  business  men  as  a  Whig 
reverencing  the  name  of  Webster.  Though  this 
alleo^iance  ended  with  the  Seventh  of  March 
speech,  he  did  not  at  the  time  form  new  political 
ties.  He  belonged  to  the  group  of  men  who  were 
stirred  to  action  not  so  much  by  anti-slavery  agi- 
tation as  by  the  defiances  of  Southern  leaders. 
"  We  are  of  course  all  anti-Nebraska  here,  but 
most  of  us  (myself  among  the  number)  are  too 
busy  to  take  much  part  in  politics."  Not  until 
the  campaign  of  1856  was  he  roused ;  thenceforth 
he  saw  a  cause  to  work  for,  and  no  claim  made 
by  it  found  him  unwilling  to  respond. 

Forbes  was  what  may  be  called  an  Emersonian 
democrat.  The  ideal  to  which  instinctively  he  was 
loyal  was  that  in  which 

Fishers  and  choppers  and  ploughmen 
Shall  constitute  a  state. 

A  form  of  government  which  perpetuated  and 
transmitted  inequality,  so  that  the  individual 
was  denied  opportunity  to  count  for  all  that  he 
was  worth,  whether  such  a  government  produced 


PUBLIC   SERVICE  109 

aristocrats  or  slaves,  was  abhorrent  to  him.  The 
body  of  principles  which  he  formulated  from  this 
faith  is  important  enough  to  be  given  at  some 
length  in  his  own  words.  Extracts  from  two 
letters  written  in  1864  to  an  English  merchant 
show  how  he  applied  it  specifically  to  the  issues 
of  the  Civil  War. 

The  fact  is,  I  am  not  good  enough  to  be  an 
abolitionist,  which  demands  a  certain  spirit  of 
martyrdom,  or  at  least  self-sacrifice,  and  devotion 
to  abstract  principle,  which  I  am  not  yet  up  to. 

I  am  essentially  a  conservative ;  have  rather  a 
prejudice  against  philanthropists,  and  have  been 
anti-slavery  more  because  slavery  is  anti-repub- 
lican, anti-peace,  anti-material  progress,  anti-civ- 
ilization than  upon  the  higher  and  purer  ground 
that  it  is  wicked  and  unjust  to  the  slave !  I  have 
no  special  love  for  the  African,  any  more  than 
for  the  low-class  Irish,  but  don't  want  to  see 
either  imposed  upon.  You  cannot  steal  one  man's 
labor  or  any  part  of  it  bylaw  without  threatening 
to  steal,  when  you  get  strong  enough,  every  man's 
labor,  and  property  and  life !  Hence  to  be  anti- 
slavery  is  to  be  conservative.^ 

I  never  had  any  right  to  call  myself  a  member 
of  the  abolition  party,  but  I  fancy  no  one  ever 
was  stronger  for  abolishing  slavery  the  first  mo- 
ment it  could  be  attempted,  without  the  danger 

1  To  William  Evans,  October  18,  1864. 


110         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

of  failiug  and  bringing  on  a  still  worse  state  of 
things  by  putting  the  North  in  the  attitude  of 
breaking  its  contracts  and  opposing  both  the 
Constitution  and  the  rule  of  the  majority ;  in 
short  putting  itself  in  a  hostile  attitude  to  popu- 
lar institutions,  which  form  now  the  barrier  be- 
tween despotic  or  aristocratic  governments,  and 
the  rights  of  the  masses.  Thus  I  was  always  for 
resisting  slavery  to  the  last  gasp  within  the  law, 
and  meantime  so  reforming  our  people  that  the 
law  might  be  altered  at  the  earliest  possible  mo- 
ment. The  abolitionists  proper  took  the  higher 
and  nobler,  but  totally  impractical,  ideal  ground 
of  not  tolerating  the  abuse  anywhere  for  a  mo- 
ment. You  can  judge  now,  after  the  fight  the 
planters  have  made,  what  sort  of  a  chance  a  few 
abolitionist  states  would  have  had  in  rebelhng 
against  the  rule  of  the  majority,  and  trying  to 
destroy  slavery  outside  of  the  existing  law,  and 
by  authority  solely  of  the  divine  or  higher  law. 
They  had  not  a  hundredth  part  either  of  the 
logical  right  or  of  the  chance  of  success  which 
you  English  had,  and  have,  to  rise  up  and  assert 
the  right  of  your  six-sevenths  of  non-voters  to 
come  in  and  govern  Great  Britain.^ 

My  particular  hobby  has  been  and  is,  true 
democracy,  which  I  consider  broader  than  anti- 
slavery  and  to  include  it ;  and  to-day,  in  view  of 
this  and  of  the  evils  of  war  and  of  the  prejudice 
which  still  exists  among  our  working  (especially 

1  See  note  on  page  126. 


PUBLIC   SERVICE  IH 

our  foreign)  population  against  the  word  aboli- 
tion, my  policy  would  be  to  carry  on  the  war,  not 
for  the  abolition  of  slavery  eo  nomine,  but  for 
the  assertion  of  the  democratic  principle,  and 
especially  for  the  suppression  of  the  class  which 
is  attempting  to  establish  an  aristocratic  govern- 
ment over  the  North  and  South.  The  head  and 
front  of  this  class  is  the  plantation  interest,  but 
it  is  aided  by  certain  demagogues  at  the  North 
who  have  usurped  the  name  of  Democrat,  and 
under  its  false  guise  have  been  luring  on  the 
laboring  men  of  the  North  to  help  the  party 
which  seeks  to  destroy  the  rights  of  free  labor ; 
just  as  the  planters  marshal  the  poor  whites  of 
the  South  to  fight  against  their  own  manifest 
interests.^ 

The  beginning  of  Forbes's  real  participation 
in  public  affairs  was  in  the  summer  of  1856,  when, 
free  from  railroad  work,  and  kept  at  Naushon  by 
reasons  of  health,  he  fell  upon  politics  as  a  sub- 
ject on  which  to  expend  his  restless  energy.  Pre- 
vented by  his  connection  with  the  construction 
of  the  Hannibal  and  St.  Joseph  Railroad  through 
Missouri  from  taking  public  part  in  the  campaign, 
he  resolved  himself  into  a  correspondence  school 
for  the  benefit  of  personal  friends,  members  of 
Congress,  and  newspaper  editors.  He  put  his 
own  convictions  in  terse  and  telling  form,  with 
great  insistence    on   their   being  the  common- 

1  To  William  Evans,  November  27,  1864. 


112         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

sense  views  of  a  business  man.  He  gave  money 
to  have  the  editorials  from  the  New  York  "  Even- 
ing Post"  printed  in  German  and  distributed  in 
Pennsylvania  and  the  West.  The  force  of  feel- 
ing, too,  he  recognized.  He  offered  a  prize  of 
two  hundred  dollars  for  words  to  the  music  of 
^^Suoni  la  Tromba/'  from  "  I  Puritani,"  ^^  the 
Italian  song  of  liberty  which  is  prohibited  in  all 
despotisms,  and  which  always  brings  down  the 
house  here."  All  the  details  attendant  upon  put- 
ting through  this  scheme  and  getting  the  songs 
sung,  he  superintended  in  a  fashion  as  remark- 
able for  carefulness  as  for  enthusiasm.  In  Octo- 
ber, in  a  business  letter  to  Joy  he  wrote  :  "  Why 
would  not  a  set  of  Fremont  concerts  do  well  now 
in  the  cities,  to  keep  the  popular  enthusiasm 
up  ?  with  good  singers  and  good  songs,  and  with 
'Hail  Columbia'  and  other  music  of  the  Union 
mixed  in !  It  seems  to  me  they  would  pay  and 
do  good  too." 

Forbes's  alliance  with  the  young  Republican 
party  in  this  its  first  presidential  campaign,  be- 
sides separating  him  from  his  former  associates, 
the  merchant  Whigs,  gave  him,  through  sympa- 
thetic activities,  new  friends  among  Abolitionists 
and  Free-Soilers,  men  outside  the  pale  of  Boston 
conservatism.  It  is  curious  and  significant  to  read 
letters  to  him  from  that  knight  of  the  radicals, 
Dr.  S.  G.  Howe,  proposing  a  meeting  between  him 


PUBLIC  SERVICE  113 

and  John  Brown ;  it  is  still  more  curious  and  sig- 
nificant to  know  that  the  meeting  actually  took 
place.  Brown,  coming  to  Forbes's  house  in  Mil- 
ton, filled  a  long  evening  with  a  recital  of  the 
deeds  in  Kansas  that  make  the  word  Ossawatomie 
so  memorable,  and  departed  the  next  morning 
not  without  aid.  On  the  following  night,  says 
the  host  in  his  Reminiscences,  with  an  eye  for 
contrasts,  railroad  business  brought  to  Milton 
Hill  as  an  occupant  of  the  same  guest-room  the 
pro-slavery  governor  of  Missouri,  who  had  set  a 
price  of  three  thousand  dollars  on  John  Brown's 
head !  When  the  Senate  investigation  into  the 
Harper's  Ferry  raid  caused  a  flurry  among  Mas- 
sachusetts Abolitionists,  Forbes  stood  by  them,  at 
this  time  becoming  fast  friends  with  the  radical 
and  philanthropic  lawyer,  John  A.  Andrew.  His 
value  as  an  asset  to  a  radical  party  fighting  in  a 
conservative  community  was  publicly  recognized 
in  the  presidential  campaign  of  1860  when,  being 
free  of  his  railroad  entanglements  in  Missouri,  he 
allowed  his  name  to  be  used  on  the  Republican 
ticket  for  the  position  of  elector  at  large. 

The  election  of  Andrew  as  governor  of  Mas- 
sachusetts put  upon  the  anti-slavery  wing  of  the 
Republican  party  a  responsibility  for  which  it  had 
had  no  experience,  and  after  his  inauguration,  in 
January,  1861,  Forbes  became  particularly  active 
in  the  councils  of  the  party.  Full  of  a  sense  that 


114         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

a  crisis  was  at  hand,  these  men,  during  the  last 
torturing  weeks  of  Buchanan's  administration, 
wished  to  guide  the  state  so  that,  whether  peace 
or  war  were  the  outcome,  she  should  take  her 
rightful  place.  If  it  were  to  be  war,  Massachu- 
setts must  be  ready  to  dispatch  her  militia  to 
Washington  without  loss  of  time.  That  possi- 
bility meant  for  Forbes  the  study  of  routes  by 
land  and  by  sea,  inquiry  into  the  loyalty  of  Bal- 
timore in  case  troops  should  go  through  by  rail, 
quiet  arrangements  for  chartering  transports  if  a 
sea-route  should  be  chosen,  and  plans  for  rapid 
mobilization  of  the  militia  regiments.  On  the  other 
hand,  when  Virginia  proposed  the  meeting  known 
as  the  "Peace  Conference,"  it  was  vital  that  the 
delegates  representing  Massachusetts  should  un- 
compromisingly stand  by  the  principles  for  which 
the  commonwealth  had  thrown  her  majority  vote 
in  November.  So  he  took  the  lead  among  the 
delegates  who  early  in  February  set  out  for  Wash- 
ington in  the  forlorn  hope  of  "  saving  the  Union." 
In  the  intervals  between  the  discussions,  which 
were  prolonged  so  as  to  kill  as  much  of  the  time 
as  possible  before  the  fourth  of  March,  he  per- 
fected a  plan  for  reenforcing  Fort  Sum.ter.  Here 
he  had  his  first  taste  of  the  irrepressible  conflict 
that  exists  between  the  business  and  the  political 
way  of  getting  a  thing  accomplished.  With  his 
friend  W.  H.  Aspinwall  of  New  York,  he  obtained 


PUBLIC  SERVICE  115 

the  consent  of  General  Scott  to  a  private  expe- 
dition to  be  managed  with  the  greatest  secrecy 
and  commanded  by  Lieutenant  Fox,  afterwards  of 
the  Navy  Department,  for  the  purpose  of  throw- 
ing men  and  provisions  into  the  beleaguered  fort. 
After  a  long  night  of  telegraphing  and  writing, 
he  went  in  the  morning  to  Scott's  headquarters, 
only  to  find  that  the  Navy  Department  had  some- 
how got  wind  of  the  scheme  and  was  pressing  its 
own  claims  to  conduct  the  movement.  As  Toucey, 
the  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  was  of  doubtful  loy- 
alty, Forbes  saw  at  once  that  the  game  was  up. 
'^Had  the  20th  of  February,  1861,"  he  wrote 
afterwards,  "opened  with  the  news  that  a  sufB.- 
cient  garrison,  well  supplied  with  powder  and  pro- 
visions, had  been  thrown  into  Fort  Sumter,  it 
might  have  changed  the  history  of  the  war."  ^ 

When  the  call  for  troops  came,  on  April  15, 
it  was  the  work  done  in  February,  the  knowledge 
of  conditions  in  Baltimore,  and  the  plans  made 
for  hiring  transports,  that  made  it  possible  for 
Massachusetts  to  win  the  distinction  of  being 
first  to  reach  Washington  with  armed  troops.  As 
a  result  of  the  isolation  of  the  capital,  the  group 
of  men  at  the  State  House  in  Boston  took  thinofs 
into  their  own  hands,  and  in  a  time  of  such 
stress  it  was  of  the  highest  value  to  the  inexperi- 
enced governor  to  have  at  his  right  hand  a  man 

^  Letters  and  Recollections ^  vol.  i,  p.  198. 


116         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

thoroughly  versed  in  maritime  transportation. 
There  was  no  one  in  Boston  to  whom  it  was  a 
simpler  affair  to  charter  a  vessel,  to  find  a  mas- 
ter, to  write  the  orders,  to  load  her  with  men 
and  supplies,  and  to  send  her  off  in  the  shortest 
possible  number  of  hours.  This  Forbes  did  with 
such  sureness  and  authority  that  he  was  called 
the  "Secretary  of  the  Navy  of  Massachusetts." 
But  he  also  had  a  hand  in  everything,  from  pur- 
chasing the  first  press-copy  books  for  the  gov- 
ernor's correspondence,  to  making  suggestions  at 
Washington  as  to  the  general  conduct  of  the  war. 
There  were  a  thousand  things  to  be  done,  and 
the  man  whose  genius  consisted  in  "pitching  in" 
was  in  his  element. 

Such  loyal  service  as  this  on  the  part  of  indi- 
viduals, the  fruit  of  vigorous  democracy,  w^as  a 
striking  characteristic  of  our  Civil  War.  James 
Ford  Rhodes,  in  speaking  of  Forbes  and  men 
who  did  like  work  in  other  Northern  cities,  says : 
"  These  citizens  helped  to  raise  troops  and  carry 
elections  and  were  relied  upon  by  their  govern- 
ors and  mayors  for  counsel  and  support.  They 
were  men  of  high  moral  and  business  standing 
whose  advice  was  always  disinterested  and  often 
of  great  value.  Their  example  in  their  commu- 
nities kept  the  fires  of  patriotism  burning,  and 
their  encouragement  of  others  who  despaired  of 
the  outcome  was  a  considerable  factor  in  the 


PUBLIC  SERVICE  117 

prosecution  o£  the  war.  Themselves  often  sick 
at  heart,  they  warded  off  despondency  by  sheer 
pluck,  feeling  that  we  should  win  because  we 
must.^i 

Such  services,  Mr.  Rhodes  goes  on  to  say,  had, 
of  course,  this  motive  of  interest,  that  these  men 
had  much  at  stake.  Except  for  those  persons  who 
went  in  for  army  and  navy  contracts,  the  dis- 
arrangement of  industry  that  the  war  produced 
inevitably  meant  to  men  of  property  uncertainty 
and  risk.  Consequently  their  cry  was  incessantly 
for  the  promptness  and  efficiency  of  action  which 
they  used  in  their  own  affairs.  At  the  first  news 
of  the  attack  on  Sumter,  for  example,  Forbes  had 
dispatched  an  agent  to  Norfolk,  Virginia,  where 
a  vessel  of  his  was  lying  for  repairs,  and  in  the 
nick  of  time  the  vessel  was  rescued  and  taken 
north  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line.  In  contrast  to 
this  dispatch,  the  Federal  Government  a  week 
later,  having  done  nothing,  lost  at  Norfolk  pro- 
perty worth  millions  of  dollars. 

It  was  the  inestimable  service  of  these  business 
men  that  they  put  relentless  pressure  on  men 
having  the  bureaucrat's  or  the  politician's  point 
of  view.  Cameron,  Secretary  of  War,  soon  proved 
his  incompetence,  and  Forbes  was  one  of  those 
who  bestirred  themselves  to  have  him  supplanted. 
He  worked  actively,  too,  for  reorganization  in 

1  History  of  the  United  States,  vol.  v,  p.  243. 


118         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

tbe  primitive  medical  department  of  the  army, 
and  in  instituting  the  Sanitary  Commission  and 
promoting  its  work.  On  the  subject  of  navy  con- 
tracts he  wrote  letter  after  letter,  making  plain 
to  lukewarm  Congressmen  by  concrete  cases  how 
much  "graft"  cost  the  government,  not  only  in 
money  but  in  time.  With  the  affairs  of  the  Navy 
Department  he  was  especially  conversant,  and 
his  intimacy  with  the  Assistant  Secretary  of  the 
Navy,  G.  V.  Fox,  and  with  Charles  B.  Sedgwick, 
chairman  of  the  House  Committee  on  Naval  Af- 
fairs, made  it  possible  for  him  to  urge  his  views 
with  tellins:  effect.  In  season  and  out  of  sea- 
son,  he  pressed  on  officials  the  priceless  value  of 
efficiency. 

Besides  the  motive  of  patriotism  as  a  stimulus 
to  action,  and  besides  the  property  stake,  there 
was  the  stake  in  human  life.  Forbes's  eldest  son 
William,  Henry  S.  Russell,  who  in  1863  became 
his  son-in-law,  Charles  Russell  Lowell,  whose 
death  in  the  glorious  charge  at  the  battle  of  Cedar 
Creek  was  the  heaviest  blow  dealt  him  during  the 
war,  young  men  like  Robert  Gould  Shaw,  Henry 
L.  Higginson,  N.  P.  Hallowell,  —  these  were  hos- 
tages, to  redeem  whom  he  strained  every  nerve. 
No  sacrifice  of  toil  was  too  great  if  it  promised 
to  bring  the  end  of  the  war  one  day  nearer,  or  to 
spare  these  devoted  ones  from  any  of  the  need- 
less dangers  to  which  they  were  exposed  by  in- 


PUBLIC   SERVICE  119 

competence,  corruption,  or  half-heartedness  at 
Washington.  For  several  months,  in  the  spring 
of  1862,  he  lived  near  his  son's  camp  at  Port 
Royal,  South  Carolina.  Later  in  the  year,  when 
his  son  and  young  Russell  were  given  commands 
in  the  new  cavalry  regiment  that  Massachusetts 
was  raising,  he  made  it  for  a  time  his  chief  busi- 
ness to  secure  recruits  for  the  regiment.  The 
bounty  system  was  already  corrupt,  brokers  and 
bounty-jumpers  were  names  of  offence.  As  the 
only  way  of  clearing  up  the  situation,  Forbes  and 
Amos  A.  Lawrence  became  brokers,  and  sent 
through  the  Northwest  and  even  into  Canada  in 
the  search  for  recruits  who  could  be  trusted  to 
stay  recruited.  In  December,  1862,  Forbes  wrote 
to  Sedgwick :  "  I  am  busy  on  our  new  regiment  of 
cavalry,  in  which  Master  Will  has  a  company  now 
nearly  raised.  I  eat,  and  drink  and  sleep  recruits. 
No  slave-trader  is  more  posted  on  the  price  of 
men!  '*  At  one  time,  with  a  business  man's  con- 
tempt for  diplomatic  delicacy,  he  turned  his  at- 
tention to  getting  men  from  over  seas.  On  his 
way  to  England  in  1863  he  wrote  to  his  daugh- 
ter :  "  What  do  you  say  to  getting  married  and 
bringing  Harry  out  here  to  recruit  a  German 
legion?  They  say  no  war  ever  went  on  without 
there  being  a  German  legion  bought  up  for  it !  " 
Also  a  plan  of  bringing  men  from  England, 
ostensibly  to  work  in  Massachusetts  mills  and 


120         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

factories,  was  the  subject  of  much  correspond- 
ence with  Charles  Francis  Adams  and  others 
in  England,  and  came  perilously  near  fruition. 
Every  scheme  was  worth  trying,  if  only  it  pro- 
mised to  be  effective. 

In  such  labors,  Forbes  was  merely  one  among  a 
thousand;  in  two  instances, however,  a  unique  act 
of  service  made  him  one  out  of  a  thousand.  The 
secret  mission  to  England  in  1863  was  an  enter- 
prise which  in  conception  and  in  execution  was 
all  his  own ;  so,  too,  was  his  method  of  develop- 
ing public  opinion  in  the  North  on  the  great  issue 
of  the  war. 

An  owner  of  vessels  and  long  familiar  with 
the  conditions  of  ocean  trade,  Forbes  saw  from 
the  first  the  train  of  international  complications 
started  by  the  Queen's  ministry,  which,  inter- 
preting the  neutrality  laws  with  extreme  liter- 
alness,  allowed  the  Confederate  pirate  cruisers 
Florida  and  Alabama  to  leave  England  in  order 
to  prey  upon  the  commerce  of  the  North,  The 
best  method  of  retaliation,  he  was  sure,  was  for 
the  United  States  Government  to  issue  letters  of 
marque  to  privateers  to  ravage  England's  com- 
merce in  return.  When  the  news  came  that  in 
the  Laird  shipyards  at  Birkenhead  were  building 
two  ironclad  rams  almost  certainly  designed  for 
the  Confederacy,  this  greater  danger  stirred  him 
to  action.    In  December,  1862,  he  proposed  to 


PUBLIC  SERVICE  121 

Fox  to  "  send  some  merchant  untrammelled  by 
naval  contractors  and  such  nuisances  to  Eng- 
land, and  there  under  guise  of  baying  for  Siam, 
or  China,  buy  the  best  of  the  war  steamers  now 
under  construction  for  the  rebels." 

From  the  business  point  of  view  the  scheme 
was  humorously  simple.  The  English  ship-build- 
ers were  out  for  large  profits ;  the  law  permitted 
the  vessels  to  be  sold  to  belligerents ;  the  nation 
with  the  longest  purse  should  by  all  rights  get 
the  ships.  In  an  affair  so  full  of  diplomatic  pit- 
falls, the  plain  business  man,  strange  to  say,  was 
authorized  by  the  Navy  and  the  Treasury  De- 
partments to  try  his  scheme,  even  although  it 
ran  directly  counter  to  the  high  moral  ground 
that  the  State  Department  w^as  taking  with  the 
British  Government.  Perhaps  it  was  not  strange, 
for  the  case  was  desperate.  Nothing  can  tell  the 
story  of  the  fears  at  Washington  better  than  a 
letter  written  by  Fox,  the  man  who  best  knew  the 
resources  of  our  navy,  and  received  by  Forbes 
so?)n  after  his  arrival  in  England. 

Earl  Russell  [the  Foreign  Secretary]  has  writ- 
ten a  letter  to  our  government  (received  yester- 
day) which,  in  plain  English,  is  this  :  ''  We  have 
a  right  to  make  and  sell.  We  are  merchants;  we 
sell  to  whoever  will  buy ;  you  can  buy  as  well  as 
the  South.  We  do  not  ask  any  questions  of  our 
purchasers.   We  shall  not  hound  dow^n  our  own 


122         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

industry.  We  are  not  responsible  for  anything. 
You  can  make  the  most  of  it." 

We  infer  from  this  bombshell  that  the  gov- 
ernment would  be  glad  to  have  the  South  get 
out  these  ironclads,  and  that  they  will  not  afford 
us  any  aid.  You  can  act  accordingly.  You  must 
stop  them  at  all  hazards,  as  we  have  no  defence 
ao^ainst  them.  Let  us  have  them  in  the  United 
States  for  our  own  purposes,  without  any  more 
nonsense,  and  at  any  price.  As  to  guns,  we  have 
not  one  in  the  whole  country  lit  to  fire  at  an  iron- 
clad. If  you  dispose  of  their  ironclads,  we  will 
take  care  of  the  whole  Southern  concern  ;  and  it 
depends  solely  upon  your  action  in  this  matter ;  an  d 
if  you  have  the  opportunity  to  get  them,  I  hope 
you  will  not  wait  for  any  elaborate  instructions. 

It  is  a  question  of  life  and  death.^ 

The  instructions  from  the  Secretary  of  the 
Navy,  drawn  up  by  Forbes  himself,  which  he 
took  with  him  when  he  set  sail  in  March,  1863, 
empowered  him  to  buy  vessels  "  building  in  Eng- 
land or  elsewhere  for  war  purposes."  As  security 
for  the  loan  of  a  million  pounds  sterling  which 
he  was  to  try  to  obtain  from  Baring  Brothers,  he 
was  given  ten  millions  of  the  5-20  government 
bonds  which  were  just  being  prepared  for  issue 
to  the  public.  These,  as  soon  as  they  could  be 
countersigned,  were  to  be  brought  to  him  by  his 
friend  Aspinwall,  who  was  associated  with  him 

1  April  1,  1863  ;  Letters  and  Recollections,  vol.  ii,  p.  22. 


PUBLIC  SERVICE  123 

in  the  enterprise.  The  voyage  in  the  slow-sailing 
Arabia  —  ''not  felix/^  he  wrote  to  his  wife  — 
must  have  afforded  him  many  opportunities  for 
reflection  on  the  extraordinary  task  which  he  had 
undertaken.  Through  his  constant  correspond- 
ence with  English  friends  he  felt  that  he  under- 
stood the  prevailing  tone  of  opinion  in  Great 
Britain,  and  he  had  an  armory  of  arguments  with 
which  to  assail  it.  Confident  that,  in  the  issue 
between  the  two  governments,  England  was  in 
the  wTong,  he  believed  that  he  could  do  some- 
thing to  make  the  English  realize  the  peril  of 
their  obstinacy.  Congress  had,  on  March  3,  em- 
powered the  President  to  issue  letters  of  marque 
to  privateers,  and  Forbes  had  already  busied  him- 
self with  plans  to  fit  out  a  vessel  in  Boston  to 
check  the  career  of  the  Alabama.  He  had  stud- 
ied the  holes  in  the  British  neutrality  laws,  and 
was  primed  with  illustrations  of  the  danger  to 
English  commerce  in  the  next  war  between  Great 
Britain  and  some  other  power.  Such  a  war,  he 
reasoned,  was  sure  to  come  soon,  and  when  it 
came  England,  thanks  to  the  precedent  she  was 
now  establishing,  would  find  the  shipyards  of 
the  United  States  supplying  commerce-destroy- 
ers to  the  other  belligerent.  Finally,  he  believed 
that  Englishmen  had  no  comprehension  of  the 
mighty  reserves  of  the  North,  both  in  moral  en- 
durance and  in  material  resources. 


124         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

Yet  with  all  the  enthusiasm  engendered  by  a 
daring  scheme  and  a  resolute  purpose,  Forbes 
none  the  less  could  perceive  the  risks  of  his  ven- 
ture. Without  the  utmost  caution  and  shrewd- 
ness he  might  easily  embroil  himself  with  the 
British  public  and  his  own  government.  Active 
enemies  and  lukewarm  friends  would  lay  pitfalls 
for  him  at  every  step.  He  had  to  work  alone,  and 
independently  of  the  State  Department,  and  ran 
the  risk  in  case  of  accident  of  being  disowned 
and  discredited  by  the  very  government  which 
he  was  trying  to  serve.  Altogether  it  was  a  cam- 
paign to  test  his  generalship. 

To  no  man,  however,  is  it  granted  correctly  to 
estimate  British  opinion  apart  from  physical  con- 
tact with  it.  Few,  without  such  contact,  can  give 
due  weight  to  that  characteristic  of  the  English 
which  Goethe  indicated  with  brutal  frankness  when 
he  remarked  that  they ''  lack  intelligence."  Land- 
ing in  Liverpool,  Forbes  called  upon  Barings'  re- 
presentative there.  "I  enraged  him  to  the  boiling 
point  by  suggesting  that  the  encouragement  by 
England,  while  a  neutral,  of  foreign  cruisers,  was 
sure  to  be  followed  by  similar  operations  when  Eng- 
land was  (as  usual)  a  belligerent.  ^Do  you  mean 
to  threaten  us?'  said  the  choleric  Price.  I  saw  that 
argument  was  useless  with  him,  and  so  talked  of  the 
weather  and  of  the  cotton  market,  which  was  about 
the  height  his  brain  was  capable  of  reaching." 


PUBLIC   SERVICE  125 

At  Barings'  office  in  London,  where  Forbes 
had  a  staunch  ally  in  the  American  partner, 
Joshua  Bates,  he  nevertheless  found  that  he 
could  not  negotiate  a  loan  of  half  a  million 
pounds  for  six  months  without  the  proviso  that, 
in  case  of  the  issuing  of  letters  of  marque  to 
privateers  intending  to  cruise  against  British  ves- 
sels, the  British  bankers  should  have  a  right  to 
claim  prompt  reimbursement  of  their  advance. 
*'  The  existing  agitation  of  the  public  mind,"  he 
reported  to  Secretary  Chase,  "  both  in  and  out  of 
Parhament,  rendered  this  condition  a  siiie  qua 
7ion,  and  we  may  safely  express  our  doubt  if  any 
other  house  would  have  undertaken  the  loan ; 
certainly  not  on  terms  so  liberal."  ^  By  the  next 
mail,  therefore,  he  must  rush  off  messages  urg- 
ing that  no  letters  of  marque  be  granted.  "  Our 
spies  in  the  enemy's  camp  say  they  openly  dis- 
cuss among  themselves  the  great  value  of  their 
3re valency  [^.  e,  of  letters  of  marque]  as  being 
likely]  to  get  us  into  a  row  with  England.  We 
must  take  care  not  to  play  into  their  hands.  The 
letters  of  marque,  too,  are,  in  our  paucity  of  fast 
steamers,  chiefly  valuable  as  a  reserved  force 
rather  than  a  blow  struck  !  "  ^ 

In  still  another  respect  Forbes  found  that  his 
prearranged    tactics   must    be   abandoned.     He 

1  April  18,  1863  ;  Letters  and  Recollections^  vol.  ii,  p.  41. 

2  To  Governor  Andrew,  April  1,  1863. 


126         AN  AMERICAN   RAILROAD   BUILDER 

called  upon  the  minister,  Charles  Francis  Adams, 
his  old  friend  and  neighbor,  the  man  to  whom 
he  had  chiefly  looked  for  advice  in  the  dark 
months  before  Lincoln's  inauguration.  Adams's 
warning  now  was  equally  sagacious.  ^*  We  had 
come,"  writes  Forbes,  "  prepared  to  do  some- 
thing in  the  way  of  enlightening  the  British 
public  as  to  the  real  strength  of  the  North  and 
the  certainty  of  our  ultimate  success,  but  Mr. 
Adams  thought  it  doubtful  whether  such  a 
course  would  be  wise;  for  if  successful  in  our 
argument  it  might  show  the  governing  class  in 
Europe  that  their  only  chance  for  breaking  up 
the  Union  was  in  active  interference ;  so  that  he 
thought  it  safer  for  them  to  be  kept  neutral  by 
the  belief  that  we  were  sure  to  break  up."  ^ 

In  point  of  fact,  Forbes  had  landed  in  England 
at  one  of  the  most  acute  of  the  numerous  crises 
during  the  war  in  the  relations  of  England  and 
the  United  States.  He  wrote  home :  "  I  find  all 
the  mercantile  and  upper  classes  entirely  against 
us,  but  the  emancipation  movement  is  coming  to 
our  rescue,  and  the  people  are  with  us  and  are 
moving  in  their  strength,  and  the  vicious  London 
^  Times '  shakes  to  hear  them."  As  a  result  of 
the  movement  among  the  six-sevenths  '^  of  non- 

1  Letters  and  Recollections,,  vol.  ii,  p.  37. 

2  "  The  total  number  of  electors  in  Great  Britain  was  about  a 
million,  but  the  figures  appear  to  indicate  that  only  four-fifths 


PUBLIC   SERVICE  127  ] 

i 


voters  in  favor  of  the  North,  and  of  the  ship- 
load of  food  sent  from  New  York  to  the  idle  cot- 
ton operatives  of  Lancashire,  the  one-seventh  of 
voters  and  their  representatives  in  the  House  of 
Commons  were  in  the  unpleasant  mood  of  men 
beginning  to  fear  the  necessity  of  owning  that 
they  had  been  in  the  wrong.  In  the  debate  in 
the  House  a  night  or  two  before  Forbes's  arrival 
their  temper  had  been  unmistakably  shown. 
From  the  hazard  of  conducting  his  negotiations 
in  such  a  situation,  however,  he  was  relieved  by 
the  turn  of  events.  Since  the  Confederates  had 
at  length  succeeded  in  floating  in  London  a  loan 
of  three  million  pounds  (taken  by  Erlanger  and 
Company,  at  77),  from  which  the  builders  of 
the  ironclads  could  be  paid,  at  least  in  part,  it 
was  clearly  impossible  to  approach  the  English 
firm  with  an  offer  from  the  United  States  gov- 
ernment. Furthermore,  after  the  seizure  of  the 
blockade-runner  Alexandra  on  April  5,  by  Earl 
Russell's  orders,  it  seemed  advisable  to  wait  for 
the  decision  of  the  Lord  Chief  Baron  of  the  Ex- 
chequer in  her  case.  The  most  that  Forbes  could 

of  those  ever  voted,  while  in  the  general  election,  in  1859,  which 
chose  the  existing  House  of  Commons,  the  whole  number  of 
votes  registered  was  under  370,000,  the  falling  off  being  largely 
for  the  reason  that  many  members  were  returned  from  bor- 
oughs and  counties  without  a  contest.  There  were,  according  to 
John  Bright,  five  to  six  million  men  who  did  not  possess  the 
franchise."  —  Rhodes,  History  of  the  U.  S.,  vol.  iii,  pp.  358,  359. 


123         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

do,  therefore,  at  the  moment,  was  to  provide 
Adams  and  the  consuls  at  London  and  Liver- 
pool with  the  ready  money  of  which  they  stood 
greatly  in  need  for  working  up  legal  evidence 
against  the  ironclads.  His  sense  of  the  danger 
that  might  result  from  extra-of&cial  action  he 
expressed  to  Governor  Andrew  :  — 

At  the  end  of  a  hard  day's  work  T  have  just 
time  to  say  that,  in  my  opinion,  it  will  take  but 
little  to  bring"  on  another  excitement  similar  to 
that  upon  the  Trent,  and  that  the  British  Premier 
would  be  likely  to  act  in  the  same  way  —  try  to 
get  British  pride  up  to  back  him,  and  then  insist 
on  our  fighting  or  backing  down.  ...  It  needs 
infinite  caution  and  firmness  to  avoid  a  war,  by 
avoiding  further  irritation,  and  even  then  a  spark 
may  blow  it  up.  .  .  . 

My  idea  of  the  situation  is  that  we  ought  to 
set  our  teeth  and  not  allow  those  bullies  to  goad 
us  into  a  war  with  their  people,  who  are  our 
friends  and  whom  they  wish  to  crush. ^ 

Forbes's  stay  in  England,  which,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  a  brief  trip  to  the  Continent,  covered 
three  months,  resolved  itself,  therefore,  on  the 
one  hand,  into  something  like  an  endurance 
run,  and  on  the  other,  into  an  attempt  to  use  in 
England  the  methods  of  influencing  public  opin- 
ion of  which  in   America  he  was  past  master. 

1  April  18,  1863. 


PUBLIC   SERVICE  129 

From  policy  he  went  to  breakfasts  and  dinner- 
parties, meeting  men  of  weight  in  business  and 
in  pubHc  life,  and  steeling  himself  against  their 
insolence  of  opinion.  In  Adams's  icy  courtesy 
of  demeanor  he  found  a  model  which  he  fol- 
lowed, sed  longo  intervallo.  His  Reminiscences 
describe  one  of  these  occasions  with  the  humor 
of  retrospect. 

Our  best  friends,  with  a  very  small  circle  ex- 
cepted, were  only  with  us  in  feeling,  and  la- 
mented that  we  should  approve  of  continuing 
the  bloody  contest  instead  of  letting  the  "  erring 
sisters  go  in  peace,"  as  many  on  both  sides  at 
first  wished.  I  especially  recall  one  dinner-party 
given  me  by  my  good  friend,  Mr.  Russell  Scott, 
to  meet  some  of  these  sympathizing  friends. 
Among  the  guests  was  the  Rev.  James  Mar- 
tineau,  who,  with  the  rest,  could  see  no  good  in 
prolonging  the  "fratricidal  contest."  The  sub- 
ject of  the  Chancellorsville  defeat,  the  news  of 
which  had  just  been  received,  of  course  chiefly 
absorbed  our  attention,  and  led  to  many  chilly 
remarks  as  to  the  folly  ©f  protracting  the  useless 
struggle  to  save  the  Union,  all  meant  for  my 
especial  benefit,  and  having  the  effect  of  pouring 
very  cold  water  upon  a  volcano  covered  with  a 
thin  layer  of  snow.  I  listened  with  the  cold  out- 
side manners  of  good  society  to  all  the  stuff,  but 
simmering  internally  like  the  aforesaid  Vesuvius, 
until  my  patience  fairly  gave  way.  In  one  of 
the  pauses  which  all  dinner-parties  experience, 


130         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

our  host  appealed  to  me  for  information  as  to 
the  truth  of  the  sad,  heart-rending  rumor  that 
the  hero,  Stonewall  Jackson,  had  been  killed  by 
his  own  soldiers  on  the  evening  of  the  rebel 
attack,  and  at  the  most  critical  period  of  the 
whole  battle.  With  a  hesitating  voice,  under 
the  boiling  feelings  which  had  been  aroused  by 
the  sentimental  stuff  which  had  been  uttered,  I 
replied,  "  I  don't  know  or  care  a  brass  farthing 
whether  Jackson  was  killed  by  his  own  men  or 
ours,  so  long  as  he  is  thoroughly  killed,  and 
stands  no  longer  in  the  way  of  that  success  upon 
which  the  fate  of  everybody  and  everything  I 
care  for  depends  !  "  Had  a  naked  Indian  in  war- 
paint, with  tomahawk  and  scalping-knife,  ap- 
peared at  the  dinner-table,  the  expression  of 
horror  and  dismay  at  my  barbarous  utterance 
could  hardly  have  been  greater;  but  anyhow  we 
heard  no  more  that  evening  about  the  wisdom 
of  concession  to  the  "  erring  sisters,"  and  their 
chivalrous  heroes  and  lamented  leaders.^ 

Of  course  no  one  realized  more  keenly  than 
he  that  this  method  of  enlightening  the  Brit- 
ish mind  was  neither  ingratiating  nor  conclu- 
sive. To  influence  public  opinion  effectively  he 
went  to  work  in  his  campaign  fashion.  First 
of  all,  naturally,  he  sought  out  such  well-known 
sympathizers  with  the  North  as  John  Bright, 
Richard  Cobden,  and  William  E.  Forster.   These 

^  Letters  and  Recollections,  vol.  ii,  p.  17. 


PUBLIC   SERVICE  131 

men  he  saw  repeatedly,  and  long  conversations 
with  them  brought  a  better  mutual  understand- 
ing of  the  situation  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlan- 
tic. Through  them  he  met  editors  of  the  liberal 
journals,  and  men  like  Goldwin  Smith  and 
Thomas  Hughes.  Fanny  Kemble,  a  friend  of 
long  standing,  he  enlisted  in  his  cause.  Where- 
ever  he  heard  of  a  man  of  influence  who  was 
sympathetically  inclined,  he  counted  no  time 
wasted  which  was  spent  in  hunting  him  up  and 
talking  to  him.  Through  his  wife's  Quaker  con- 
nections, he  procured  letters  to  the  chief  men 
of  the  English  Society  of  Friends,  and  pre- 
pared a  paper  to  read  to  them  at  their  May 
meetings  in  London.  After  their  own  fashion 
of  uncompromising  speech,  he  set  before  them 
the  consequences  of  the  British  course,  and  be- 
sought them  to  use  their  influence  to  restrain 
the  headstrong  ministry. 

Yesterday  [he  wrote  to  his  wife]  I  attacked 
the  broad-brim  phalanx  and  at  first  made  no  im- 
pression, but  after  my  letters  were  read,  I  found 
a  change  of  tone.  The  Brethren  said  to  each 
other,  "  This  friend  is  accredited  by  our  regular 
correspondents  in  America ! "  etc.  But  to-day 
they  are  so  busy  with  their  religion  and  politics, 
etc.,  etc.,  that  it  is  hard  to  make  any  impression 
upon  them,  and  unluckily  one  of  the  leaders, 
Josiah  Forster,  lies  quite  sick.    I  went  to  their 


132         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

place  of  meeting  yesterday  and  to-day,  and  stood 
round  in  the  courtyard,  a  stranger  and  alone, 
watching  the  crowd  !  What  a  strange  sensation 
it  is,  to  one  accustomed  to  social  life  and  to  be 
among  acquaintances,  to  stand  alone,  unknown, 
and  have  only  to  watch  the  coming  and  going 
of  the  multitude,  each  occupied  with  his  or  her 
plans  and  thoughts  !  ^ 

Some  years  later  he  quoted  from  memory 
to  a  correspondent  the  reply  made  by  the  chair- 
man when  he  had  finished  reading  his  address. 
^'  Friend,  I  believe  every  word  thou  hast  said  is 
true,  but  I  must  say  that  thy  words  about  my 
country  stir  up  the  ancient  Adam  even  in  me, 
and  I  do  not  think  it  expedient  to  circulate 
them  at  this  time."  In  such  an  atmosphere  one 
is  trebly  ^'  a  stranger  and  alone." 

Other  resolute  Americans,  however,  had  in- 
vaded England,  and  they  held  up  each  others' 
hands.  For  the  most  part,  they  fell  into  one  or 
other  of  the  groups,  —  "  roving,  poaching,  and 
volunteer  diplomats,"  —  named  by  Mr.  Charles 
F.  Adams  in  his  life  of  his  father.  William  M. 
Evarts  had  come  to  give  legal  assistance  in 
working  up  the  case  against  the  rams;  Robert 
J.  Walker,  of  Mississippi,  Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury under  Polk,  "  a  most  useful  man  just  now, 
as  he  can  mark  Jeff  Davis  as  the  repudiator," 

1  May  22,  1863. 


PUBLIC  SERVICE  133 

had  been  sent  by  Secretary  Chase  "  to  acquamt 
European  capitalists  with  the  actual  circum- 
stances and  resources  of  our  country/'  in  the 
hope  of  selling  to  them  United  States  bonds,  or 
at  least  of  making  the  holders  of  Confederate 
bonds  uncomfortable;  Bishop  Fitzpatrick,  "as 
good  an  American,  as  agreeable  a  companion, 
and  doubtless  as  sound  a  Catholic  as  lives,"  la- 
bored in  his  own  field;  Henry  Ward  Beecher, 
dauntless  on  the  platform,  mastered  the  rowdies 
who  came  to  bait  him.  In  fact,  in  the  spring 
and  summer  of  1863  one  of  the  decisive  cam- 
paigns of  the  Civil  War  was  being  fought  on 
British  soil  under  the  generalship  of  Charles 
Francis  Adams;  and  these  men,  gallant  fighters 
all,  bore  no  mean  part  in  the  contest.  With 
Earl  Russell's  order,  in  September,  that  the  rams 
should  be  detained,  the  victory  was  won.^ 

This  secret  mission   to  England,  which  was 

^  One  other  piece  of  business  which  occupied  much  of  Forbes's 
time  in  England  shows  how  thoroughly  the  men  in  Massa- 
chusetts did  everything  that  they  undertook.  Not  only  was  it 
true,  as  Fox  had  already  written  to  Forbes  (see  page  122),  that 
there  was  not  one  gun  in  the  country  fit  to  fire  at  an  ironclad; 
but  the  Federal  Government,  in  response  to  Governor  Andrew's 
insistent  demands  for  the  protection  of  Boston  Harbor,  de- 
clared itself  helpless.  From  the  Massachusetts  legislature,  ac- 
cordingly, Andrew  obtained  funds  for  the  purchase  of  guns  in 
England,  and  Forbes  was  charged  with  the  business.  It  meant 
unlimited  time  spent  in  inspection  of  gun-factories,  negotiations 
with  manufacturers,  and  letter-writing,  —  all,  as  the  event 
proved,  wasted. 


134         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

concluded  by  the  end  of  June,  though  it  fell 
short  of  what  its  projector  had  designed,  was 
not  without  its  effect  on  him.  At  the  end  of  it, 
Forbes  had  no  illusions  concerning  aristocracy 
as  a  human  institution.  He  knew  it,  surface  and 
depth,  and  with  all  the  power  of  an  intense  and 
single  nature,  abhorred  its  far-reaching  conse- 
quences. ^^  War  is  the  game  of  princes  and  aris- 
tocrats," he  wrote  of  this  experience,  "and  al- 
most always  at  the  expense  of  the  masses."  "  I 
have  seen  enough  of  the  English  nobility  and 
gentry,  and  of  the  trading  classes  there,  who 
act  as  flunkeys  to  their  masters,  to  make  me 
hate  the  whole  raft  of  them,  with  so  deep  a 
hatred  that  I  will  never  lift  my  hand  to  indulge 
them  in  a  war,  until  I  see  an  occasion  when  it 
will  disenthral  their  people,  instead  of  riveting 
the  chains  which  now  bind  six-sevenths  of  their 
population." 

The  other  original  contribution  made  by 
Forbes  to  the  cause  of  the  North  remains  to  be 
described.  It  constituted  a  most  striking  expres- 
sion of  his  individuality,  and  he  was  not  wrong 
in  thinkins^i^  it  the  most  valuable  service  that  he 
rendered.  Having  a  New  Englander*s  religious 
belief  in  education,  he  developed  an  organization 
to  form  public  ojiinion  on  the  main  issues  of  the 
war,  and  to  bring  this  opinion  to  bear  on  the 


PUBLIC   SERVICE  135 

men  in  Washington  who  waited  for  its  voice. 
Such  work  he  undertook  neither  in  the  poHti- 
cian's  spirit,  with  tongue  in  cheek,  nor  on  the 
chivalrous  impulse  of  noblesse  oblige.  To  him 
the  spirit  of  citizenship  was  the  spirit  of  frater- 
nity. His  effort,  therefore,  was  based  on  the  sim- 
ple assumption  that  other  men,  having  the  same 
plain  and  straightforward  democratic  creed  as 
his  own,  would,  if  they  could  be  brought  to  see 
the  thing  as  he  saw  it,  act  as  he  was  acting.  His 
means  of  enforcinjy  his  views  were  those  he  had 
already  used,  now  applied  on  a  much  wider  scale. 
Personal  interviews  and  letters,  communications 
signed  "  Audax  "  and  "  Senex  "  in  leading  jour- 
nals, articles  for  the  "Atlantic  Monthly  "  worked 
up  at  his  suggestion,  —  all  these  he  employed  as 
a  matter  of  course.  The  establishment  of  the 
Union  Club  of  Boston,  in  line  with  a  movement 
in  the  principal  cities  of  the  North,  was  another 
enterprise  that  took  much  of  his  time. 

What  was  distinctively  his,  however,  was  the 
New  England  Loyal  Publication  League.  This 
was  an  organization  the  management  of  which 
was  entrusted  to  Charles  Eliot  Norton  and  to 
James  B.  Thayer,  afterward  professor  in  the 
Harvard  Law  School,  which  carried  on  in  sys- 
tematic fashion  the  work  that  Forbes  had  been 
doing  irregularly  in  his  own  office.  To  some 
nine  hundred  newspapers  in   the   North   there 


136        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

was  sent  free  a  weekly  broadside  made  up  of 
representative  articles  that  were  worth  a  wider 
circulation  than  they  would  get  from  their  ori- 
ginal publication.  By  such  means  the  attention  of 
busy  editors  was  called  to  comments  friendly  and 
unfriendly  of  the  English  press,  —  for  instance, 
Carlyle's  savage  "Ilias  Americana  in  Nuce," 
—  to  characteristic  utterances  in  the  Southern 
newspapers,  a  signijBcant  speech,  an  interesting 
experiment  such  as  that  of  the  cultivation  of 
cotton  by  free  negroes  in  the  Sea  Islands,  im- 
portant reports  of  government  officials,  sound 
doctrine  on  finance,  and  the  contemporary  verse 
inspired  by  the  war.  Above  all,  the  broadsides 
kept  before  the  press  of  the  country  as  cardinal 
doctrines,  vigorous  prosecution  of  the  war.  Eman- 
cipation, and  the  arming  of  the  blacks.  The  yearly 
cost  of  this  enterprise  was  less  than  four  thou- 
sand dollars,  and  it  was  estimated  that  by  it  at 
least  one  million  readers  were  reached.  The  jus- 
tice of  Forbes's  valuation  of  this  work  will  be 
confirmed  by  all  who  know  by  practical  expe- 
rience the  prevalence  of  lazy  thinking  and  the 
formative  power  of  ideas  well  put. 

The  value  of  the  tool  which  Forbes  had  thus 
forged  and  which  none  kncAV  better  than  he  how 
to  use  was  not  for  him  expressed  in  any  such 
general  terms.  It  was  devised  for  the  special 
work  of  pushing  on  the  administration  at  Wash- 


PUBLIC   SERVICE  137 

ington  to  prompt  and  bold  measures.  Lincoln, 
in  order  to  secure  the  backing  of  a  united  North, 
was  under  the  necessity  of  advancing  slowly,  by 
means  of  conciliation  and  compromise.  The  ad- 
vantage of  decisive  action  could  never  be  his, 
for  he  must  listen  in  turn  to  the  voice  of  the 
Border  States,  of  the  West,  and  of  New  Eng- 
land, and  then  must  plot  a  path  of  progress 
which  should  represent  the  equilibrium  of  these 
forces.  Public  opinion  was  the  only  influence  to 
which  he  would  respond,  and  Forbes  therefore 
sought  to  bring  it  to  pass  that  the  desire  of 
himself  and  his  friends  for  an  aggressive  policy 
should  be  so  widely  spread  and  so  vigorously 
asserted  as  to  constitute  a  body  of  opinion  fairly 
irresistible.  The  whole  plan  was  logically  con- 
ceived, efficiently  executed,  and  amazingly  suc- 
cessful. 

In  thus  working  for  the  development  of  an 
aggressive  war  sentiment  throughout  the  North, 
Forbes  came  more  and  more  into  sympathy  and 
alliance  with  the  radicals  in  Massachusetts  and 
in  New  York.  Originally  Free-Soilers  or  Aboli- 
tionists, they  were  now  derisively  called  "Black 
Republicans,"  and  to  a  conservative  business 
man  like  Forbes  many  of  them  must  have  proved 
strange  company.  But  their  logic  was  his,  and 
together  he  and  they  stood  fast  in  demanding 
first  Emancipation,  and  then  the  arming  of  the 


138        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

negro.  Moreover,  Forbes,  the  man  of  action  as 
well  as  the  man  of  ideas,  was  among  the  fore- 
most of  them  in  getting  these  principles  trans- 
muted into  deeds.  When  popular  sentiment  con- 
cerning the  negro  as  a  soldier  ranged  all  the 
way  from  amused  skepticism  to  rabid  antipathy, 
Porbes  was  one  of  the  small  committee  of  "  be- 
lievers" appointed  by  Governor  Andrew  to  or- 
ganize the  Fifty-fourth  Massachusetts  Infantry. 
He  had  a  large  share,  too,  in  raising  the  Fifth 
Massachusetts  Cavalry,  another  negro  regiment, 
of  which  his  son-in-law,  Henry  S.  Russell,  was 
made  colonel.  When  recruiting  of  the  blacks 
lagged  in  Missouri,  he  seriously  considered  going 
there  to  lend  a  hand.  He  took  a  vigorous  part 
in  the  trying  controversy  as  to  whether  negro 
troops  should  be  paid  as  soldiers  or  as  laborers ; 
he  pushed  measures  for  recruiting  negroes  in  the 
rebel  states ;  and  again  and  again  importuned 
the  government  to  insist  that  negro  soldiers, 
when  captured,  should  be  treated  as  prisoners  of 
war. 

This  determination,  grim  and  dour,  that  the 
war  must  be  put  through  to  the  very  end,  en- 
countered a  baffling  obstacle  in  the  offers  of 
peace,  real  or  bogus,  which  Lincoln  felt  bound 
at  least  to  entertain  during  the  summer  of  1864. 
As  the  President,  who  was  fighting  for  nothing 
more  than  a  united  North  would  fight  for,  could 


PUBLIC   SERVICE  139 

not  afford  to  ignore  these  overtures,  so  the  no- 
compromise  men  must  perforce  oppose  them  as 
involving  certain  and  complete  disaster  to  all 
that  they  were  contending  for.  Thus  it  befell 
that  Forbes  played  a  part  in  that  curious  cam- 
paign within  a  campaign,  —  the  movement  for 
securing  the  withdrawal  of  Lincoln  and  Fremont 
from  the  field  and  the  nomination  of  a  new 
candidate  on  a  war  platform.  Never  were  high- 
minded  men  more  desperately  in  earnest  than 
the  group  which  met  in  New  York  at  the  house 
of  David  Dudley  Field,  on  August  30,  to  can. 
vass  this  possibility.  But  they  were  not  self- 
seekers;  and  when  their  consultation  made  it 
plain  that  Lincoln  was  after  all  the  only  man 
available,  they  recognized  their  own  obhgation 
to  put  their  shoulders  to  the  wheel  and  carry 
him  through.  By  force  of  their  disinterestedness 
and  of  the  body  of  public  opinion  behind  them, 
they  must  bring  him  to  separate  himself  from 
men  who  counselled  peace  and  to  put  himself 
squarely  at  the  head  of  the  war  party.  Fortu- 
nately the  stars  in  their  courses  fought  with  them. 
''  The  war  is  a  failure,"  declared  the  Democratic 
convention  at  Chicago ;  and  Sherman  and  Far- 
ragut  from  Atlanta  and  Mobile  flung  back  the 
lie  triumphantly. 

Meanwhile  this  group  of  civilians  worked  no 
less  valiantly  in  the  North  to  crystallize  the  war 


140        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

sentiment  and  to  make  it  an  unanswerable  argu- 
ment with  which  to  go  to  Lincoln. 

I  have  everything  at  stake  in  the  army  [wrote 
Forbes  to  his  friend  Fox];  my  son  and  my  son-in- 
law  are  there  —  my  younger  son  training  to  go. 
All  the  young  men  that  I  love  or  value  are  there 
or  incapacitated.  I  want  peace  for  their  sakes;  I 
hate  war  for  its  own  sake;  but  I  solemnly  protest 
against  crying  "Peace"  when  there  is  no  peace. 
It  only  means  a  short  truce^  defeat  at  the  election, 
and  then  prolonged  w^ar  with  an  invigorated  en- 
emy, perhaps  strengthened  with  foreign  alliances. 
If  I  had  any  political  position  or  any  eloquence, 
or  had  any  power  of  moving  the  President,  I 
would  go  and  tell  him  this;  but  situated  as  I 
am,  I  feel  that  it  w^ould  be  a  mere  waste  of  his 
time  and  mine.  If,  however,  you  agree  with  me, 
you  have  his  ear,  and  our  combined  voices  might 
reach  him.  In  that  case,  pray  read  him  this  let- 
ter, telling  him  it  comes  from  one  who  has  no 
political  aspirations,  and  who  only  wants  safety 
for  free  institutions,  and  a  true  peace ;  one  who 
has  no  isms,  and  who  is  willing  to  trust  to  the 
negro's  getting  his  rights,  if  we  can  only  estab- 
lish a  true  democracy ;  for  the  greater  involves 
the  lesser.^ 

For  weeks  every  day  was  lived  on  this  high 
level  of  feeling  and  every  moment  was  precious 
for  action ;  "  the  most  exciting,  if  not  the  most 

^  September  6, 1864 ;  Letters  and  Recollections,  vol.  ii,  p.  102. 


PUBLIC  SERVICE  141 

depressing  period  of  the  war,"  Forbes  afterwards 
called  it.  *^If  I  can  do  any  good  as  a  drummer- 
up  I  will  go  to  the  world's  end/'  were  his  words 
of  promise  at  the  time  ;  and  the  story  of  one  ad- 
venture, told  in  later  years,  preserves  the  elation 
of  spirit  that  came  to  the  workers  as  they  saw 
that  the  tide  in  the  affairs  of  men  was  at  its  flood, 
and  leading  them  on  to  fortune. 

I  pushed  on  again  to  New  York  to  see  what 
could  be  done,  and  the  first  step  was  to  see  our 
Nestor,  Peter  Cooper,  not  then  so  well  known  out- 
side of  Manhattan  Island  as  he  has  been  since. 
When  asked  for  advice  and  letters  of  introduc- 
tion to  leading  men,  he  curtly  replied,  "There  is 
no  time  for  letters  or  palavers;  get  with  me  into 
my  buggy."  The  horse  was  soon  at  his  office 
door,  or  already  there  tied  to  a  lamp-post  or  to 
a  weight,  and  away  trotted  the  vigorous  old  mer- 
chant, with  his  queer  hat  and  his  keen  eye,  whip 
in  hand,  ready  even  then,  after  all  our  blunders, 
to  take  the  war  by  contract  and  "  put  it  through 
by  daylight,"  as  the  old  stage-drivers  used  to  ad- 
vertise their  routes !  From  door  to  door  we  drove, 
through  the  crowded  streets,  stirring  up  one 
timid  friend,  holding  back  the  next  who  wanted 
some  other  method,  and  insisting  against  delay, 
or  doubt,  or  change  of  plans;  and  in  half  the  time 
anybody  else  would  have  taken,  he  (with  the  big 
Cooper  Institute  open  at  his  nod)  settled  the  great 
meeting  of  the  period,  when  the  brains  and  force 
of  New  York  gave  the  key-note  to  the  voices  of  the 


142        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

country  for  making  no  compromise,  no  step  back- 
ward while  such  a  contest  at  the  polls  was  going 
ouj  until  by  hard  knocks  the  back  of  the  Rebel- 
lion should  be  broken  and  a  real  peace  secured.^ 

The  one  unfortunate  and  yet  almost  inevitable 
result  of  this  warfare  to  keep  up  war  was  that 
Forbes  grew  to  have  less  and  less  respect  for 
Lincoln  as  a  real  leader  of  the  nation.  Again  and 
again  the  President  was  seen  by  Forbes  to  do  the 
right  and  wise  thing  only  after  tremendous  pres- 
sure had  been  put  upon  him ;  frequently,  too, 
his  next  act,  done  in  response  to  influence  from 
another  quarter,  seemed  to  one  of  the  Massachu- 
setts radicals  far  from  either  right  or  wise.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  Forbes  was  always  ar- 
dently for  action ;  his  watchwords  of  promptness 
and  efiiciency  could  not  sort  with  Lincoln's  watch- 
words of  compromise  and  conciliation.  Moreover, 
Forbes,  exceptionally  well  informed  though  he 
was  for  an  outsider,  could  not  possibly  have  the 
knowledge  necessary  to  interpret  Lincoln's  ad- 
vances and  retreats  from  week  to  week,  and  to 
discern  the  course  of  his  persisting  policy.  We, 
detached  students  of  a  later  age,  to  w^hom  this 
knowledge  is  accessible,  can  read  from  it  the 
leadership  of  the  will  that,  though  subtle, 

Bent  like  steel, 
To  spring  again  and  thrust. 

J^  Letters  and  Recollections,  vol.  ii,  p.  106. 


PUBLIC   SERVICE  143 

To  Forbes,  whose  convictions  were  bound  and  set 
by  the  mould  of  actual  experience,  this  under- 
standing was  not  vouchsafed. 

During  the  entire  period  of  the  Civil  War, 
Forbes,  though  holding  no  office,  Hved  in  effect 
the  life  of  a  public  servant.  On  affairs  of  private 
business  he  spent  little  time ;  he  was  ready  at  an 
instant's  notice  to  answer  any  emergency  call  for 
the  public  good.  The  service  thus  given  taxed 
his  strength  as  severely  as  any  matter  of  ships  or 
railroads  had  done.  More  than  once  his  health 
was  threatened,  and  he  had  to  give  his  head  a 
rest.  Then  he  was  up  and  at  it  again.  It  goes 
without  saying  that  four  years  of  such  effort 
gave  him  a  commanding  position  in  the  councils 
of  the  party  which  had  been  in  control.  Though 
henceforth  business  affairs  resumed  the  first  place 
in  his  life,  he  was  called  upon  pretty  steadily  until 
1884  for  public  service.  Such  participation  in 
public  life  on  the  part  of  a  disinterested  man  of 
business,  though  it  should  be  as  normal  as  it  is 
necessary  to  democratic  efficiency,  is  in  fact  the 
exception.  Well  worth  presenting  as  such  a  rec- 
ord is,  what  he  did  during  the  Civil  War  never- 
theless takes  the  place  of  first  importance  because 
it  speaks  more  clearly  to  the  imagination.  For 
that  reason  the  diffused  work  of  nineteen  years 
must  here  be  given  short  space. 


144        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

To  understand  Forbes's  position  on  the  import- 
ant issues  of  Reconstruction  and  the  Alabama 
Claims,  it  must  be  remembered  that  he  was  a 
good  hater.  In  his  opinion,  the  Southern  aristo- 
cracy, having  been  conquered,  must  suffer  the  un- 
mitigated consequences  of  defeat;  by  the  same 
token,  the  British  aristocracy,  having,  in  egre- 
gious folly,  created  a  body  of  public  opinion 
which  permitted  the  escape  of  the  pirate  cruisers, 
must  now  pay  to  the  uttermost  farthing  for  the 
damao:e  done  to  American  commerce.  Even  if 
payment  should  be  required  of  the  sweeping 
claims  for  indirect  damages,  England  should 
consider,  he  felt,  that  she  had  been  let  off  easily. 
He  therefore  took  his  stand  with  the  radicals  in 
tlie  measures  related  to  these  two  subjects,  and 
his  opinions  probably  drew  nearer  those  of  Sum- 
ner than  at  any  other  time  in  the  life  of  either.^ 

The  plan  which  was  set  forth  by  Andrew  in  his 
valedictory  address  to  the  Massachusetts  Legis- 
lature, and  which  proposed  that  the  leaders  in 
rebellion  should  be  trusted  to  become  the  leaders 
in  reconstruction,  seemed  to  Forbes  as  nothing; 
in  negro  suffrage,  maintained  by  military  power, 
he  saw  the  only  hope  of  preserving  what  the 
North  had  fouo^ht  for  so  hard.    He  went   the 

^  In  1872  he  went  beyond  Sumner  in  insisting  on  the  need  of 
military  control  in  the  South  in  order  to  keep  the  blacks  in 
power. 


PUBLIC  SERVICE  145 

whole  distance  with  the  Congressional  party  in 
its  quarrel  with  Johnson.  Here,  as  everywhere 
with  Forbes,  belief  was  always  followed  up  by 
action,  whether  in  helping  to  found  the  New 
York  "  Nation  "  to  give  expression  to  the  best 
Union  sentiment,  or  in  organizing  a  Reconstruc- 
tion Association,  or  in  reviving  the  New  England 
Emigrant  Aid  Society  of  Kansas  days,  for  the 
sake  of  encouraging  Northerners  not  of  the  car- 
pet-bag variety  to  settle  in  Florida. 

One  incident  of  this  period  is  strongly  charac- 
teristic of  Forbes's  sense  of  retributive  justice 
and  his  determination  to  have  a  hand  in  dispens- 
ing it.  Coming  back  from  England  in  1863  hot 
with  wrath  at  British  obtuseness  in  the  matter 
of  their  neutrality  laws,  and  casting  about  for  a 
means  of  concrete  demonstration  against  which 
not  even  British  obstinacy  could  be  proof,  he 
induced  a  number  of  other  men  to  join  him  in 
building  a  ship  of  war,  the  Meteor.  She  was  to 
have  an  armament  similar  to  that  of  the  Kear- 
sarge,  and  was  to  be  faster  than  anything  in  our 
navy.  She  should  therefore  be  able  to  overtake 
and  capture  the  Alabama;  but  that  was  only  one 
of  the  expectations  with  which  she  was  built. 
"  Should  our  beloved  Uncle  Bull  get  into  a 
fight,"  Forbes  wrote  to  Charles  Francis  Adams, 
on  September  20,  1864,  Avhen  the  vessel  was 
nearly  ready  for  sea,  "  one  use  I  should  make  of 


146        AN  AMERICAN   RAILROAD  BUILDER 

her  would  be  to  advertise  her  most  extensively 
for  sale  in  his  enemy's  dominions,  warranting  her 
superiority  over  the  Alabama  in  speed,  strength, 
size,  etc.,  but,  of  course,  only  for  sale  in  conform- 
ity with  the  law  of  nations,  three  miles  outside 
American  jurisdiction,  but  armed  and  equipped, 
in  fact,  a  mere  Minie-rifle  contraband  of  war  and 
liable  to  seizure  at  sea,  but  not  in  any  way  break- 
ing our  neutral  obligations.  In  such  case  an  ap- 
propriate name  for  her  would  be  the  '  Neutral 
Lamb,'  or  the  '  British  Neutral.'  " 

The  gusto  with  which  he  threw  himself  into 
this  expensive  game  of  tit-for-tat  appears  from 
the  imaginary  advertisements  which  he  wrote 
out  and  sent  to  Professor  Goldwin  Smith  as  illus- 
trations of  what  would  be  inserted  in  French 
papers  in  case  of  a  war  between  France  and 
Eno^land. 

'^ For  Sale:  the  steamers  Perfide  Albion^ 
Vengeance,  Flambeau,  etc.,  now  lying  in  Bos- 
ton ready  for  sea,  —  feet  long,  —  wide,  —  deep  ; 
warranted  to  steam  15  knots  and  to  carry  — 
days'  coal,  admirably  suited  for  a  privateer ;  for 

further  information  apply  to &  Co.,  who, 

be  it  said,  can  easily  arrange  with  any  promising 
customers  to  have  said  steamers  at  any  given 
point  outside  of  neutral  waters  for  sale  where 
they  can  be  examined,  and  if  approved,  pur- 


PUBLIC  SERVICE  147 

chased."  —  ''The  seller  will  take  care/'  Foihes 
adds,  "  not  to  complete  any  contract.  He  will 
trot  his  horse  out  into  neutral  ground,  there  to 
show  his  paces  and,  if  liked,  to  be  sold ;  and  it  is 
my  solemn  belief  that  in  case  of  a  French  war 
there  would  be  five  hundred  dangerous  ships  at 
sea  originating  in  American  ship-yards  within 
the  first  eiofhteen  months."  ^ 

The  episode  of  the  Meteor  terminated  in  a 
manner  peculiarly  bitter  for  one  who  had  done 
so  much  to  strengthen  our  navy.  When  the  ves- 
sel was  ready  for  sea,  the  war  was  so  nearly  at  an 
end  that  the  Navy  Department  refused  to  buy 
her.  Since  she  could  not  be  used  for  mercantile 
purposes,  her  owners  consulted  lawyers  eminent 
in  matters  of  international  law,  and  found  that 
she  could  properly  be  sold  from  a  neutral  port 
if  she  was  provided  with  no  warlike  equipment. 
War  had  then  just  been  declared  between  Spain 
and  Chile,  and  on  the  chance  that  she  might  be 
purchased  by  Chile,  she  was  about  leaving  New 
York  for  Panama,  when  she  was  detained  by 
Seward,  on  complaint  of  the  Spanish  minister. 
The  Secretary  of  State,  it  appeared,  with  an  eye 
to  his  case  against  England  on  account  of  the 
Alabama's  ravages,  was  willing  to  snatch  at  any 
excuse  for  giving  a  practical  demonstration  of 
the  superior  virtue  of  the  United  States  in  en- 

1  November  25,  1864. 


148         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

forcing  its  neutrality  laws.  In  other  words,  as 
Forbes  remarked,  Seward  had  made  of  him  a 
^vlietstone  for  the  grinding  of  his  own  diploma- 
tic knife.  In  the  detention  there  may  also  have 
been  personal  animus,  for  Forbes's  contempt  for 
the  Secretary  had  been  as  outspoken  as  it  w^as 
profound.  The  long  delays  of  the  trial  that  en- 
sued went  far,  at  any  rate,  to  justify  this  supposi- 
tion. In  the  end  the  owners  of  the  vessel  had 
the  satisfaction  of  winning  their  case  against 
the  government,  but  the  damages  which  they 
obtained  wiped  out  only  a  small  part  of  their 
heavy  loss.  Perhaps  the  irony  of  such  a  termina- 
tion might  be  regarded  by  unfriendly  critics  as 
a  judgment  on  a  man  who  had  presumed  to  take 
into  his  private  hands  the  retribution  that  be- 
lonofs  to  nations.^ 

Among  all  the  fields  of  activity  which  Forbes 
entered  in  the  course  of  his  public  service,  the 
one  in  which  he  was  naturally  most  at  home  was 
that  of  finance.  Here  he  worked  not  "  without 
any  preparation,  simply  by  pitching  in,  honestly 
and  entirely,"  but  as  an  adept.  His  comprehen- 
sive and  far-seeing  vision,  his  resourcefulness, 
his  knowledge  of  detail,  his  honesty,  —  in  short, 
all  the  qualities  that  had  made  him  so  successful 

1  See  article  by  J.  T.  Morse,  Jr.,  in  the  American  Law  Re- 
view,  vol.  iii,  p.  234,  on  the  legal  aspects  of  the  case  ;  and  R.  B. 
Forbes's  Personal  Reminiscences,  second  edition,  p.  271. 


PUBLIC  SERVICE  149 

as  a  railroad  financier,  were  brought  to  bear  upon 
the  financial  problem  of  the  nation.  At  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war  he  fought  sturdily  against 
the  proposal  to  make  the  issue  of  fifty  million 
greenbacks  legal  tender  ;  and  when  that  fight 
was  lost  did  all  that  he  could  to  mitigate  the 
troubles  that  were  bound  to  follow.  Once  en- 
gaged in  this  work,  there  was  for  him  no  with- 
drawing of  his  hand;  and  as  the  finances  of  the 
war  became  more  and  more  involved,  his  aid  was 
more  and  more  frequently  sought.  As  always, 
his  method  was  that  of  the  "  plain  citizen,"  who 
through    correspondence   and   conversation   en- 
forced his  views  upon  those  responsible  for  legis- 
lative or  executive  action  and  those  charged  with 
the  framing  of  public  opinion.  Thus  he  was  in 
close  touch  with  the  successive  secretaries  of  the 
treasury,  particularly  Fessenden  and  McCulloch, 
with  members  of  committees  of  Congress,  and 
with    numerous    editors.    Again   and  again    he 
urged  some  merchant  to  make  a  visit  to  Wash- 
ington to  press  the  necessity  of  a  special  meas- 
ure, or  in  a  letter  to  some  member  of  the  admin- 
istration he  presented  the  point  of  view  of  one 
of  his  foreign  correspondents.    So   it  was  also 
through  the  perilous  days  of  "green-backism" 
after  the  war.  The  distinction  of  his  work  lay  in 
his  thorough  understanding  of  finance  in  its  re- 
lation to  politics  and  the  general  public  welfare, 


150        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

and  in  his  willingness  to  give  time  and  thought 
without  limit. 

Forbes's  connection  with  party  politics  con- 
sisted of  his  attendance  as  a  delegate  at  the  Re- 
publican conventions  of  1876,  1880,  and  1884, 
and  his  membership  in  the  Republican  National 
Committee  during  the  same  period.  He  repre- 
sented the  group  of  Massachusetts  independents 
who,  by  protesting  year  after  year  against  the 
growth  of  corruption  and  boss  rule  within  the 
party,  were  preparing  themselves  for  the  revolt 
of  1884.  His  position  as  a  man  who  had  no  ex- 
pectations of  office  and  no  constituents  to  con- 
ciliate, and  who,  moreover,  could  raise  large  sums 
for  the  expenses  of  the  campaign  gave  him  a 
strategical  advantage  which  he  made  the  most 
of.  He  held  the  money-bags  tight,  particularly 
in  the  campaign  of  1880,  when  the  notorious 
Dorsey  was  secretary  of  the  committee.  Natur- 
ally, his  position  was  far  from  comfortable.  The 
fight  with  the  bosses  was  a  losing  one.  As  the 
machine  became  perfect  in  its  organization  and 
set  at  naught  one  attempt  after  another  at  re- 
form within  the  party,  honesty  in  politics  be- 
came as  vital  an  issue  with  him  as  had  been  the 
great  questions  of  the  Civil  War.  Thus  when  in 
1884  the  machine  element  secured  the  nomina- 
tion of  Blaine,  there  was  but  one  course  open  to 
him.  An  independent  within  the  party  must  now 


PUBLIC   SERVICE  151 

logically  become  an  independent  outside  the 
party,  and  Forbes  announced  bis  support  of 
Grover  Cleveland.  His  position  among  the  Mug- 
wumps of  Massachusetts  was  conspicuous  be- 
cause few  men  of  his  generation  had  the  alert- 
ness and  courage  to  leave  the  party  of  their 
early  faith.  To  the  younger  men  with  whom  he 
found  himself  associated  he  was  full  of  wise 
counsel ;  but  at  the  age  of  seventy-one  his  days 
of  hard  fighting  were  over. 

Forbes's  career  of  public  service,  looked  at  as 
a  whole,  reveals  two  remarkable  characteristics. 
In  the  first  place,  he  went  out  of  his  way  to 
keep  his  acts  for  the  common  welfare  concealed 
from  the  general  knowledge.  "  I  pray  you  not 
to  embalm  my  name  in  print,"  was  the  burden 
of  frequent  postscripts  in  his  letters  to  journal- 
ists; and  men  in  public  office  received  similar 
warnings.  In  thus  being  a  hidden  source  of 
influence,  an  unrecognized  power  behind  the 
throne,  there  may  possibly  have  been  a  dash  of 
fascination;  but  the  real  reason  for  his  self- 
obliteration  is  to  be  found  in  his  thorough-going 
democratic  creed,  which  made  it  unseemly  for  a 
plain  man  to  let  himself  be  exalted  above  the 
common  people  whom  he  claimed  as  his  equals. 
How  indispensable  is  idealism  of  this  type  Stop- 
ford  Brooke  has  indicated  in  a  criticism  of  the 
^^  Idylls  of  the  King."    It  is  perhaps  a  far  cry 


152        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

from  Tennyson's  conception  of  the  character  of 
Arthur  to  John  M.  Forbes's  conception  of  his 
obligations  as  a  citizen  of  the  United  States,  but 
the  illustration  is  apt. 

^^  As  to  Arthur,  the  King,  he  is  a  man  who  has 
the  power  of  sending  his  own  soul  into  the  soul 
of  his  followers,  and  making  them  his  own  — 
images  of  himself  —  and  this  is  the  power  of  a 
born  ruler  of  men.  It  is  the  one-man  power,  that 
power  of  which  Carlyle,  as  well  as  Tennyson, 
made  much  too  much,  because  the  secret  of  the 
progress  of  mankind,  a  secret  the  true  ruler 
should  understand,  does  not  lie  in  one  great  in- 
dividuality devouring  all  other  individualities  and 
making  them  into  his  pattern,  but  in  his  so  sac- 
rificing his  natural  mastery  as  to  develop  into 
vividness  the  individual  forces  of  all  the  charac- 
ters he  governs.  Carlyle  never  saw  that  truth, 
nor  Ruskin,  nor  Tennyson."  ^  The  story  of  a 
leader  of  men  like  Forbes,  who  thus  lives  up  to 
his  vision  of  the  truth  that  he  who  would  really 
lead  must  not  dominate,  is  of  profound  conse- 
quence to  our  national  welfare. 

In  the  second  place,  the  standard  of  citizen- 
ship which  Forbes  held  up  for  himself  was  high, 
and  never  suffered  abatement  at  his  hands.  The 
kind  of  effort  for  which  the  average  business  man 
is  too  much  absorbed  in  profit-making  to  spare 

1  Tennyson^  his  Art  and  Relation  to  Modern  Life,  p.  362. 


PUBLIC  SERVICE  153 

time,  and  which,  when  a  crisis  comes,  he  exer- 
cises spasmodically  and  with  much  hue  and  cry, 
Forbes  employed  systematically  and  persistently. 
With  a  people  like  ours,  "  who  insist  upon  try- 
ing their  own  experiment  over  again,  and  ignor- 
ing past  experience  of  others  or  their  own," 
there  is  but  one  hope:  "everybody  must  work, 
and  agitate,  and  educate."  He  knew  that,  to- 
gether with  self-efFacement,  tireless  vigilance 
must  be  exercised  to  counteract  the  constant 
tendency  of  democracy  to  sink  below  the  level 
of  safety.  To  this  faith  he  kept  true,  and  he 
did  his  part  in  action  as  long  as  strength 
remained  in  him. 


CHAPTER  V 

A   RAILROAD    BATTLE 

IN  the  period  after  the  Civil  War,  railroad 
expansion  was  carried  forward  on  an  even 
greater  scale  than  during  the  years  from  1850 
to  1858.  Even  more,  too,  was  it  a  time  of  irregu- 
lar financial  methods,  —  of  Erie  raids  and  Credit- 
Mobilier  scandals, — and  of  crude  business  or- 
ganization. The  pioneer  work  to  be  done  in 
this  era  was  in  developing  methods  of  manage- 
ment and  control  adequate  to  the  size  and 
complexity  which  the  railroad  corporations  of 
the  coming  age  were  clearly  destined  to  attain. 
Here,  again,  it  was  Forbes's  fortune  to  lead. 
Indeed,  to  bring  about  the  changes  that  he 
deemed  requisite  for  taking  the  stock  and  bonds 
of  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  out  of  the  "  fancies "  and 
putting  them  among  the  "solids,"  he  was  in 
the  end  called  upon  to  do  battle.  The  story  of 
this  struggle  epitomizes  the  gropings  of  the 
railroad  world  at  that  time  toward  a  better  day. 
Forbes's  passion  for  sound  and  sure  business 
methods,  never  dormant,  had  naturally  strength- 
ened with  age  and  with  his  experience  of  panics 
and  resulting  railroad  reorganizations.  The  duties 


A  RAILROAD  BATTLE  155 

of  a  trustee,  which  he  had  undertaken  for  a 
number  of  people,  also  had  a  powerful  influence 
in  strengthening  his  determination  that  his  roads 
should  be  of  such  character  that  other  trustees 
should  look  upon  them  as  safe  investments. 
"  When  I  get  mounted  on  my  hobby  of  conserv- 
ative business  management,"  he  wrote  to  one  of 
the  men  for  whom  he  was  thus  acting,  ^^  I  can- 
not always  help  treading  on  the  corns  of  dear 
friends  who  will  not  be  satisfied  with  what  such 
an  old  Gradgrind  as  I  am  thinks  essential  to 
business  character  and  foresight." 

Another  influence  with  Forbes  that  made  for 
conservatism  was  his  definite  and  practical  know- 
ledge of  the  many  ways  in  which  a  railroad  man 
may  find  himself  in  the  Janus  attitude  of  being 
both  buyer  and  seller.  When  one  of  his  rail- 
roads found  it  desirable  to  purchase  rails  from 
a  company  of  which  he  was  an  official,  he  refused 
to  be  responsible  for  the  negotiations.  "I  am 
unwilling  to  run  the  risk  of  having  the  impu- 
tation of  buying  from  a  company  in  which  I 
am  interested,  unless  others  who  have  no  such 
interest  first  examine  the  subject  and  decide  that 
the  terms  are  fair."  Such  an  instance,  of  course, 
might  seem  so  simple  as  to  be  hardly  worth  men- 
tioning, except  that  his  practice  was  not  always 
followed  by  other  railroad  men.  For  example, 
many  a  road,  as  has  already  been  shown.,  found 


156        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

it  difficult  to  make  its  arrangements  for  building 
without  assuring  large  profits  to  the  contractors 
who  were  to  undertake  the  work.  The  bonuses 
of  stock  which  these  contractors  demanded  put 
them  in  control  of  the  road,  and  thus  enabled 
them  to  pass,  as  buyers,  upon  the  work  for  which 
they  were  being  paid.  Forbes's  "four-months* 
nightmare  "  with  the  man  who  had  the  contract 
for  building  the  Hannibal  and  St.  Joseph  Rail- 
road had  been  the  result  of  such  conditions.  He 
was  thus  somewhat  out  of  sympathy  with  a 
Credit-Mobilier  age  of  railroad-building,  being 
himself  content  with  the  old-fashioned  maxim 
that  it  is  impossible  to  run  with  the  hare  and 
hunt  with  the  hounds. 

Finally,  Forbes's  public  services  during  the 
war  gave  him  this  special  and  inestimable  ad- 
vantage, that  he  was  among  the  first  men  in  the 
business  world  to  recognize  and  to  measure  the 
force  that  was  to  play  such  an  important  part  in 
the  new  period  of  railroad  development — the 
power  of  public  opinion.  A  railroad,  dependent 
for  its  prosperity  on  the  welfare  of  the  extended 
community  which  it  serves,  could  not,  he  felt, 
continue  to  expect  to  deal  with  the  members  of 
that  community  merely  as  individuals;  sooner  or 
later  it  must  reckon  with  the  community  as  a 
whole.  That  these  dealings  might  be  on  equal 
terms,  it  was  essential  that  the  public  should  un- 


A  RAILROAD  BATTLE  157 

derstand  the  nature  of  railroad  operations,  that 
it  should  have  some  insight  into  the  economic 
laws  that  govern  them. 

From  his  success  with  the  Loyal  Publication 
Leao-ue  during  the  war,  he  was  convinced  that 
it  is  possible  to  transform  what  is  too  often  a 
will-o'-the-wisp  of  hght  into  a  true  beacon,  and, 
after  his  wont,  he  made  of  this  belief  a  personal 
duty.  One  out  of  many  instances  of  such  action 
was  his  course  in   connection  with  the  ill-fated 
Boston,  Hartford,  and  Erie  Railroad.  It  had  been 
planned  for  the   purpose  of   giving   Boston   a 
much-needed  communication  with  the  West  by 
means  of  a  line  connecting  with  the  Erie  Rail- 
road at  Newburg  on  the  Hudson,  the  river  to  be 
crossed  by  ferry.  When  money  had  been  squan- 
dered to  the  extent  of  making  the  road  cost  over 
one  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  mile,  and  the 
State  of  Massachusetts  was  appealed  to  for  fur- 
ther aid,  Forbes  was  aroused.    He  bestirred  him- 
self with  such  success  that  the  facts  brought  out 
at  the  legislative  hearing  prevented  the  Common- 
wealth from  throwing  away  good  money  to  get 

back  bad. 

Later,  at  the  time  when  the  prairie  farmer's 
discontent  with  the  railroads  expressed  itself  in 
the  first  crudities  of  granger  legislation,  Forbes 
was  full  of  schemes  for  systematically  putting 
forth  in  readable  shape  information  from  which 


158        AN  AMERICAN   RAILROAD  BUILDER 

the  hostile  grangers  might  receive  enlightenment. 
But  here  he  was  ahead  of  the  times :  the  West- 
ern railroad  managers,  with  their  "  hands  off  " 
attitude  toward  state  legislatures,  were  in  no 
mood  to  heed  public  opinion  until  they  had  been 
disciplined  by  decisions  of  the  Supreme  Court. 

A  man  whose  business  methods  were  thus 
dominated  by  conservatism  and  a  sense  of  public 
responsibility,  and  who  himself  possessed  a  hard- 
won  experience  in  the  management  of  Western 
roads,  could  not  long  stand  aloof,  particularly  in 
time  of  trouble.  In  the  smooth  waters  of  the 
years  from  1864  to  1872  Forbes  was  a  care-free 
passenger;  but  in  1873,  with  its  storm  of  panic, 
his  place,  as  in  1857,  had  to  be  at  the  helm. 

To  understand  the  situation  which  required 
the  help  of  his  skill  and  force  in  reorganization, 
it  is  necessary  to  review  the  history  of  the  C.  B. 
&  Q.  in  the  period  preceding  the  panic. 

The  result  of  the  rapid  railroad  expansion 
after  the  war  was  seen  as  early  as  1870  in  the 
existence  of  three  lines — of  which  the  C.  B.  & 
Q.  and  the  Burlington  and  Missouri  in  Iowa  con- 
stituted one  —  connecting  Chicago  and  Omaha, 
and  in  the  formation  of  the  "  Omaha  pool "  for 
the  purpose  of  dividing  equally  the  profits  of  the 
business  done  between  the  two  cities.  Though 
the  evils  of  competition  were  checked  here,  they 
cropped  out  elsewhere  in  the  constant  tempta- 


A  RAILROAD   BATTLE  159 

tions  offered  to  the  trunk  lines  to  purchase  small 
branch  roads.  The  usual  method  was  for  a  group 
of  towns  considering  themselves  worthy  of  the 
privileges  of  a  railroad  to  vote  for  its  construction 
sums  which  often  ran  as  high  as  ten  thousand 
dollars  a  mile,  and  then  to  take  their  proposed 
line  to  market.  The  trunk  line  which  they  first 
approached  rarely  refused  to  pay  the  sum,  how- 
ever large,  which  might  be  needed  to  attach  the 
new  road  to  its  system ;  little  as  it  might  be 
able  to  afford  the  expense,  —  for  these  branches 
usually  proved  ^*  suckers  "  instead  of  "  feeders," 
—  it  could  still  less  afford  to  see  the  branch 
grafted  upon  a  rival  trunk.  Eastern  directors 
had  as  yet  hardly  heard  of  pools,  such  things 
being  minor  mysteries,  with  which  Western 
managers  alone  were  concerned;  but  the  pro- 
posals for  the  purchase  of  branch  roads  came 
within  their  cognizance,  and  they  were  inclined 
to  suspect  that  these  schemes  were  often  sheer 
imposition.  Forbes's  certainty  on  this  point 
was  pithily  put  at  the  time  in  story  fashion, 
and  he  was  fond  of  telling  the  anecdote  in  later 
years. 

It  had  become  quite  common  [he  writes  in 
his  "  Reminiscences "  ]  for  [the  President]  to 
come  from  the  West  with  a  plan  for  a  hundred 
or  two  miles  of  new  road,  which  then  meant 
i^bout  $30,000  of  seven  or  eight  per  cent  bonds 


160        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

per  mile ;  and  on  one  occasion,  when  such  a 
branch  was  about  being  authorized,  I  related  a 
story  of  my  Naushon  experience.  We  had  been 
troubled  with  cats,  which  destroyed  our  birds, 
and  so  we  put  a  bounty  on  killing  them  of  so 
much  for  every  cat's  tail  brought  in ;  which 
amount  proving  insufficient  we  raised  the  price 
until  we  found,  or  thought  we  found,  that  they 
were  raising  cats  to  bring  in  to  sell  to  us.  "  Now," 
said  I  to  the  directors,  "  I  am  convinced  that  the 
contractors  and  speculators  are  building  roads 
merely  to  sell  to  us,  and  the  more  we  buy  of 
them,  the  more  cats*  tails  will  be  brought  in  to 
us ! "  That  cat  was  not  bought ;  the  story  got 
around,  and  in  Boston  circles  the  Chicago,  Bur- 
lington, and  Quincy  branches  were  known  as  the 
C.  B.  &  Q.  cats'  tails.^ 

Still  another  difficulty  connected  with  railroad 
management  in  these  years  was  the  insistent 
need  of  pushing  out  into  new  territory  at  a  rate 
and  in  a  direction  that  should  prove  far  enough 
and  yet  not  too  far  ahead  of  the  oncoming  flow 
of  population.  Here  was  a  problem  containing 
so  many  chances  for  error  in  its  solution  that 
the  interests  of  the  company  as  a  whole  must 
be  considered  from  every  point  of  view  before 
it  was  safe  for  the  road  to  commit  itself.  The 
B.  &  M.  in  Nebraska,  organized  as  a  separate 
corporation  to  build  from  the  Missouri  River  at 

1  Letters  and  Recollections ,  vol.  ii,  p.  213. 


A  RAILROAD  BATTLE  161 

Plattsmouth  to  the  recently  completed  Union  Pa- 
cific at  Kearney,  besides  having  a  land  grant  of 
2,365,864  acres,  easily  justified  itself  as  being 
certain  to  obtain  a  good  share  of  business  from 
and  to  the  Union  Pacific.  Another  plan  for 
building  a  road  up  the  west  bank  of  the  Missis- 
sippi River  into  what  was  then  the  far  North- 
west, that  is  to  say,  southern  Minnesota,  was 
agreed  to  by  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  board,  and  was  put 
into  execution  in  similar  fashion  by  the  organ- 
ization of  two  independent  companies  known  as 
the  Dubuque,  or  River,  Roads.  The  directors  of 
the  C.  B.  &  Q.  recommended  to  their  stockhold- 
ers the  bonds  of  these  roads  to  the  extent  of  some 
four  and  a  half  millions  of  dollars,  and  took  a 
considerable  share  for  themselves.  The  bonds 
bore  six  per  cent  interest  and  were  sold  at  90. 
In  this  case,  however,  the  caution  of  the  Eastern 
directors  had  given  way  too  easily  before  the  en- 
thusiasm of  the  Western  officials :  the  promise 
of  local  aid  and  a  land  grant  of  40,000  acres 
could  not  make  up  for  tbe  fact  that  the  roads 
were  built  nearly  ten  years  too  soon.  Charles  E. 
Perkins,  Forbes's  cousin,  who  had  been  associ- 
ated with  the  B.  &  M.  in  Iowa  since  1859,  showed 
his  clearer  understanding^  of  the  situation  at  the 
moment  in  the  ironical  remark  that  the  directors 
of  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  might  as  well  have  endorsed 
the  bonds  of  a  railroad  to  be  built  in  the  valley 


162        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

of  the  Red  River  of  the  North. ^  From  this  error, 
as  will  presently  appear,  came  a  train  of  disas- 
trous consequences. 

Consolidation  naturally  went  hand  in  hand 
with  rapid  physical  development.  On  January  1, 
1873,  the  C.  B.  &  Q.,  with  its  825  miles  of  track, 
and  the  B.  &  M.  in  Iowa,  with  its  443  miles,  were 
united,  the  new  corporation,  which  held  property 
worth  more  than  fifty  millions  of  dollars,  being 
one  of  the  largest  in  the  country.  But  this  was 
only  a  first  step.  Though  the  new  C.  B.  &  Q. 
stood  hio^h  in  the  financial  world  and  commanded 
the  services  of  able  men  in  its  several  depart- 
ments, its  organization  was  extremely  haphazard. 
It  had  no  definite  method  for  securing  harmoni- 
ous and  united  action  between  the  financial  man- 
agement in  Boston  and  the  operating  management 
in  Chicago,  and  its  system  of  auditing  belonged 
to  ante-helium  days.  Furthermore,  as  with  the  di- 
rectors in  Boston  the  care  of  C.  B.  &  Q.  interests 
was  only  one  of  several  irons  in  the  fire,  so  the 
executive  officers  in  Chicago  gave  to  the  road  only 
a  portion  of  their  time.  Nowhere  was  there  a  man 
of  experience  and  force  in  high  position  devoting 
himself  exclusively  to  the  service  of  the  road. 

The  dangers  of  such  a  situation  came  upon 
Forbes  with  cumulative  effect  in  June,  1873, 
after  his   return  from  a  yachting  trip  to   the 

1  MS.  Recollections  of  C.  E.  Perkins. 


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A  RAILROAD   BATTLE  163 

Azores  and  a  visit  to  California  which  had  kept 
him  away  from  Boston  and  business  for  a  year 
and  a  half.  Long  trusted  as  his  co-workers  and 
fellow  counsellors  had  been,  their  acquiescence  in 
the  methods  and  routine  of  smaller  days  contin- 
ued under  the  new  conditions  became  a  trouble 
that  he  could  not  shake  off.  Reports  from  his 
sharp-eyed  and  critical  cousin  in  the  West,  who 
now,  as  vice-president  of  the  B.  &  M.  in  Ne- 
braska, could  speak  more  freely  of  C.  B.  &  Q. 
men  and  measures,  helped  to  make  Forbes  feel 
that  matters  should  no  longer  be  allowed  to 
drift.  The  bonded  indebtedness  of  the  combined 
roads  needed  badly  to  be  got  into  satisfactory 
shape,  and  there  was  a  floating  debt  of  a  million 
and  a  half  dollars.  His  uneasiness  is  expressed 
in  a  letter  written  to  a  fellow  director  not  long 
after  his  return. 

I  do  think  we  need  more  control  at  this  end 
over  our  50-million  property. 

We  know  next  to  nothing  and  we  trust  the 
administration  of  this  mammoth  enterprise  1000 
miles  off  to  a  man  who  has  no  experience  in  the 
details  of  R.  R.  business,  and  who  represents  at 
least  two  other  companies,  whose  interests  may 
he  conflicting  :  1st,  the  coal  co.  of  whom  we  buy 
our  fuel ;  2d,  a  R.  Road  which,  with  or  without 
his  fault,  has  managed  to  get  largely  into  a  debt 
to  us  which  it  cannot  pay. 

I  don't  know  how  many  other  things  he  may 


164        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

be  m,  which  are  suckers  instead  of  feeders,  but 
if  the  stockholders  ever  look  into  their  affairs 
and  find  that  in  one  way  and  another — with 
the  Board's  assent  and  without  it  —  the  present 
administration  have  used  over  a  million  of  their 
money  for  the  protection  of  other  enterprises  in 
wliich  some  of  the  Directors  are  concerned,  and 
all  the  stockholders  are  not,  we  shall  find  our- 
selves in  a  very  awkward  position.  It  was  only 
at  the  June  meeting  of  the  Board  that  I  knew 
of  this  accumulation  of  indebtedness.  It  was  my 
fault  that  I  did  not  know  and  try  to  prevent  it, 
but  I  don't  feel  like  going  on  in  the  same  road 
much  farther. 

Anybody  may  make  one  such  blunder  in  trust- 
ing others'  management,  but  the  man  that  makes 
it  a  second  time  with  his  eyes  thus  opened  be- 
comes a  party  to  the  mismanagement,  and  I  con- 
fess I  see  nothing  to  prevent  the  same  sort  of 
thing  being  done  right  over  again  —  except  that 
our  credit  is  not  quite  so  good.^ 

The  disquiet  here  expressed  was  not  allayed 
when  Forbes  learned  of  the  pass  to  which  the 
two  River  Roads  had  been  brought.  From  the 
outset  misfortune  had  attended  them.  The  Chi- 
cago and  Northwestern,  which  owned  the  rail- 
road bridge  over  the  Mississippi  at  Clinton,  act- 
ing with  pardonable  consideration  for  its  own 
interests,  refused  to  permit  the  lower  of  the  two 
to  make  connection  over  it  with  the  C.  B.  &  Q. ; 

^  July  13,  1873. 


A  RAILROAD  BATTLE  1C5 

and  thus  a  portion  of  the  additional  traffic  ex- 
pected went  to  increase  the  profits  of  a  rival 
trunk  line.  As  if  this  were  not  bad  enough,  ex- 
travagant construction  and  careless  management 
had  done  their  worst,  and  early  in  1873  the 
River  Roads  were  in  such  condition  that  they 
were  unable  to  pay  tlie  interest  on  their  bonds. 
In  this  emergency,  the  directors  of  the  C.  B.  & 
Q.  undertook  to  save  the  situation  by  voting  the 
sum  necessary  for  this  payment  from  the  funds 
of  their  company.  When  Forbes  discovered  where 
the  cash  for  his  coupons  came  from,  his  first  im- 
pulse was  to  express  his  disapprobation  and  disgust 
by  returning  the  money.  To  one  of  the  directors 
who  protested  against  this  course  he  wrote :  — 

Not  wishing  to  do  anything  in  haste  which  so 
wise  a  man  as  you  disapproves  of,  I  withdraw 
my  letter  .  .  .  for  the  moment;  but  when  you 
get  time  I  wish  you  would  give  me  in  ten  lines 
the  grounds  upon  which  you  expect  to  justify 
the  payment  of  the  Dubuque  Bonds  coupons. 

That  it  will  eventually  come  out  and  be  chal- 
lenged is  just  as  sure  as  that  we  live,  and  now  is 
the  time  for  any  of  us  who  were  not  responsible 
for  the  transaction  to  take  their  ground. 

I  am  open  to  conviction  ;  but  while  I  can  guess 
at  many  good  reasons  for  paying  out  such  a  large 
sum  to  outsiders,  I  am  utterly  at  a  loss  for  rea- 
sons justifying  our  voting  it  to  ourselves.^ 

1  August  7,  1873. 


166         AN  AMERICAN  RAILHOAD   BUILDER 

On  this  point  Forbes  yielded  for  the  moment. 
In  the  meantime,  his  passion  for  having  things 
sound  and  right,  and  his  sense  of  responsibihty, 
now  thoroughly  awakened,  drove  him  to  work 
over  plans  for  getting  the  indebtedness  of  the 
road  into  shape  by  a  large  issue  of  mortgage 
bonds  which  Baring  Brothers  might  be  induced 
to  take.  This,  of  course,  they  would  not  do 
"without  giving  C.  B.  &  Q.  a  good  sifting," 
and  thus  the  reforms  in  the  management  which 
Forbes  desired  could  be  accomplished.  In  such 
manner  the  summer  wore  away. 

The  panic  of  September,  1873,  with  its  wide- 
spread wrecking  of  railroads,  when  the  River 
Roads  went  completely  under,  and  the  C.  B.  &  Q. 
stood  firm  chiefly  through  the  strength  brought 
to  it  by  the  B.  &  M.,  was  to  Forbes  a  trumpet- 
call  to  action.  As  of  old,  nothing  roused  him  so 
completely  as  the  threat  of  disaster.  Within  a 
week  he  was  off  for  the  Mississippi  Valley,  im- 
patient and  relentless,  to  do  a  little  "sifting" 
on  his  own  account.  With  him  went  John  N.  A. 
Griswold,  who  had  lately  been  added  to  the 
Board  and  on  whom  he  relied  implicitly.  A 
batch  of  telegrams  scattered  notice  of  their  com- 
ing. "  If  we  cannot  do  any  good  we  can  say  we 
have  tried  !  "  Iiq  wrote. 

The  investigation  included  a  trip  over  the 
River  Roads  from  Clinton  to  La  Crescent.  With 


A  RAILROAD   BATTLE  167 

the  two  men  from  the  East  were  J.  K.  Graves, 
the  president  of  the  roads,  and  various  high 
officials  of  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  system.  In  the  course 
of  the  journey,  Graves  explained  to  one  member 
of  the  party  that  the  work  of  building  the  roads, 
as  yet  incomplete,  had  been  undertaken  by  a 
construction  company,  of  which  several  of  the 
directors  of  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  were  stockholders.^ 
Other  facts  given  in  the  same  conversation  were 
such  as  to  lead  Forbes,  when  it  was  repeated  to 
him,  to  determine  on  a  session  of  rigid  cross- 
examination.  Here  follows,  in  his  own  vivid  and 
vigorous  language,  the  story  of  the  interview,  as 
he  wrote  it  out  in  detail  within  the  next  forty- 
eight  hours  for  the  benefit  of  one  of  the  direct- 
ors in  Boston. 

Returning  Friday  night  from  our  survey  we 
passed  the  evening  at  the  company's  offices  in 
an  interview  (and  a  course  of  inquiries)  with  the 
president,  Mr.  Graves,  the  treasurer.  General 
Booth,  and  the  superintendent,  Mr.  Hudson, 
which  developed  the  most  remarkable  condition 
of  things  which  I  have  thus  far  found  upon  any 
living  railroad  company.  The  president  is  a  sharp 
merchant,  full  of  various  enterprises,  from  gas- 
works up  to  building  railroads,  pretty  bright,  but 
loose  in  his  notions  of  administration,  loose  be- 
yond the  imagination  of  the  ordinary  mind  to 
conceive  of. 

1  MS.  Recollections  of  C.  E.  Perkins. 


168        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

General  Booth,  on  the  other  hand,  seems 
tighter  and  more  technical  than  any  West  Point 
martinet;  his  accounts  beautifully  correct  in 
form,  and  (as  he  says)  kept  distinct  in  bank  from 
his  private  or  from  any  outside  mixings;  but  he 
is  and  professes  to  be  simply  an  automaton.  .  .  . 
To  our  questions  whether  he  used  any  discretion 
in  the  application  of  the  funds  or  any  super- 
vision of  their  use,  he  replied  frankly :  — 

"  None  whatever.  I  simply  pay  the  money 
when  called  for  by  the  president  and  the  super- 
intendent." 

"What  has  been  done  with  the  $140,000, 
more  or  less,  earned  by  the  roads  since  December 
1,1872?" 

"  It  has  been  paid  to  the  superintendent's 
order  for  expenses,  and  the  balance  has  been 
paid  to  the  president.  What  the  president  does 
with  it  is  no  concern  of  mine." 

Question  to  the  president :  "  What  have  you 
been  doing  with  the  company's  money  ?  " 

Answer.  "  I  have  been  paying  the  notes 
which  I  have  given  as  president." 

"  What  are  the  notes  ?  Where  is  the  record 
of  them  ?    Is  it  in  the  treasurer's  account  ?  " 

"  It  is  not  in  the  company's  books,  but  can  be 
ascertained." 

"  What  were  the  notes  given  for?" 

Answer.  "  Chiefly  to  meet  the  obligations  of 
two  construction  companies,  of  which  I  was 
president  also,  and  which  built  the  roads  of  each 
company  by  contract." 

"  Then  you,  as  president  of  the  railroad  com- 


A  RAILROAD   BATTLE  169 

pany,  are  paying  yourself  as  president  of  the 
construction  company,  without  the  supervision 
of  the  treasurer  or  of  any  one  else,  and  without 
any  auditing  of  your  accounts?'^ 

"  Yes." 

''  Have  the  construction  company  received  the 
full  amount  of  money,  of  stocks,  of  lands,  for 
which  they  agreed  to  construct  and  equip  the 
roads  ?  " 

"  Yes,  they  have,  leaving  unfinished  about 
forty  miles  of  Turkey  Branch  and  twelve  miles 
on  the  lower  road." 

"  Have  any  of  your  directors  besides  yourself 
been  interested  in  these  contracts  ?  " 

The  answer  to  this  was  not  definite,  but  left 
the  impression  that  some  of  the  directors  had 
been,  and  he  promised  to  send  me  a  copy  of  the 
contracts,  and  a  list  of  the  stockholders  in  the 
construction  company.  He  asserts  that  all  the 
assets  of  the  construction  company  have  been 
expended,  except  a  part  of  the  land  grant,  which 
remains  unsold ;  and  to  my  question  whether 
this  remaining  land  ought  not  to  be  returned  to 
the  company,  he  answered  that  he  thought  the 
contractors  would  do  whatever  is  fair,  but  that 
they  had  been  large  cash  losers  by  the  contract, 
and  have  nothing  but  a  little  land  and  a  good 
deal  of  railroad  stock  to  show  for  it. 

Exactly  how  much  cash  from  our  earnings 
had  been  paid  over  to  the  contractor  president, 
we  had  not  time  to  investigate,  but  of  course 
if  the  superintendent's  figures  are  right,  about 
$140,000;   and  the  railroad  president  seems  to 


170        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

be  expecting  to  go  on  paying  to  the  contractor 
president  our  earnings  as  they  come  in,  until  he 
has  paid  off  the  debts  of  the  construction  com- 
pany. .  .  . 

What  the  equities  or  the  elements  of  expedi- 
ency are,  I  know  not,  but  it  is  perfectly  clear  to 
me  that  the  board,  which  I  now  understand  is 
transferred  to  Boston,  ought  at  once  to  direct 
the  treasurer  to  apply  the  earnings,  first,  to  pay- 
ing off  legitimate  operating  expenses,  and  next 
to  hold  the  balance  for  such  uses  as  the  board 
may  direct,  —  or,  better  still,  remit  it  to  Boston, 
instead  of  holding  it  to  the  order  of  Mr.  Graves 
—  an  active  merchant  and  the  representative, 
first,  of  contractors,  and  second,  of  another  rail- 
road, the  Iowa  Pacific,  to  whose  use  he  has 
already  applied  $170,000  of  the  funds  of  our 
two  companies,  or  of  the  contractors,  which  are 
all  mixed  up  together.  Mr.  Graves  (to  his  credit 
be  it  said)  seemed  to  appreciate  the  absurdity  of 
his  position,  and  expressed  a  desire  to  have  his 
accounts  audited  and  to  have  a  settlement;  but, 
in  our  judgment  (I  speak  of  Griswold  and  my- 
self), the  blame  will  be  transferred  to  the  board, 
if,  after  knowing  this  state  of  things,  they  allow 
the  funds  of  the  company  to  remain  a  day  longer 
under  the  control  of  a  man  who  has  so  many 
other  uses  for  them,  however  honest  and  how- 
ever rich  he  may  be  on  paper. 

As  an  instance  of  what  may  happen,  the  pay- 
roll was  postponed  a  month  in  order  to  pay  some 
of  the  debts,  but  whether  it  was  for  the  debts  of 
the  railroad  company  or  for  the  contractor,  or  the 


A  RAILROAD  BATTLE  171 

Iowa  Pacific,  or  Mr.  Graves's  personal  ones,  we 
had  not  time  to  investigate,  and  nobody  can  tell 
until  an  auditor  (and  a  very  good  and  forcible 
one)  settles  what  Mr.  Graves's  account  stands 
at,  and  who  ought  to  pay  the  notes.  He  has 
signed  as  president,  probably  without  any  vote 
of  the  board,  and  certainly  without  having  them 
recorded  in  the  books  of  the  company.^ 

The  director  to  whom  Forbes  poured  out  this 
story  of  mismanagement,  in  the  hope  of  eliciting 
his  sympathetic  indignation,  was  himself,  such  is 
the  irony  of  circumstance  in  the  business  world, 
one  of  the  members  of  the  construction  company, 
—  a  fact  which  soon  came  to  light.  Indeed,  it 
presently  transpired  that  six  out  of  the  twelve 
members  of  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  board  were  in  this  posi- 
tion, and  five  of  the  six  were  Boston  men.  Being 
persons  of  integrity,  who  had  conceived  that,  in 
their  two-fold  capacity  as  contractors  and  direct- 
ors, they  were  fully  able  to  deal  with  themselves 
justly,  they  took  offence  at  Forbes's  pointed 
questions  concerning  their  acts,  and  refused  to 
give  information.  This  secrecy,  based  on  a  natu- 
ral thoujrh  mistaken  wish  not  to  seem  to  flinch 
under  fire,  of  course  aroused  suspicion,  and  led 
the  way  to  a  demand  for  an  investigation.  Finally, 
the  resentment  felt  by  the  contractor-directors 
that  Forbes  should  seem  to  impugn  their  honesty 

1  November  9,  1873. 


172         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

as  well  as  their  judgment  bad  the  effect  of  unit- 
ins:  them  in  defence  of  the  old  reo^ime  in  the  C. 
B.  &  Q.  board  and  its  methods. 

The  point  of  Forbes's  criticism  of  his  associates 
is  perhaps  best  seen  from  a  letter  written  during 
the  lonof  course  of  these  difficulties  to  his  friend 
S.  G.  Ward,  agent  of  Baring  Brothers.  "Either 
you  or  George  once  made  a  very  pertinent  re- 
mark about  C.  B.  &  Q.,  to  the  effect  that  we  had 
honest  enough  management,  everybody  said,  but 
that  it  took  something  besides  honesty  to  run  a 
big  railroad,  and  that  the  smart  rogues  around 
us  would  beat  us  in  net  profits  to  their  stock- 
holders after  having  stolen  all  they  wanted !  I 
have  often  thought  of  it,  and  recognized  the 
soundness  of  your  view.  Skill,  talent,  courage, 
honesty  are  all  essential  to  railroad  management, 
and  especially  so  in  distant  ones  which  are  apt  to 
be  managed  after  the  fashion  of  the  Roman  vice- 
roys." When  therefore  he  found  that  the  con- 
tractor-directors either  could  not  or  would  not 
see  their  fault,  there  was  nothing  for  him  but 
deliberately  to  range  himself  against  them.  His 
clear  sense  of  the  welfare  of  the  great  corpora- 
tion, the  reorganization  of  which  he  now  deemed 
more  important  than  ever,  and  his  feeling  of 
responsibility  toward  the  hundreds  of  investors 
whose  money  it  was  using,  both  drove  him  on  to 
action. 


A  RAILROAD  BATTLE  173 

Though  he  and  his  supporters  were  a  minority 
in  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  board,  they,  as  bondholders 
of  the  River  Roads,  were  able  to  stir  up  their 
fellow  victims.  An  authorized  investigating  com- 
mittee from  this  group  of  men  made  consider- 
able progress  in  ascertaining  the  true  condition 
of  things,  and  at  last  unearthed  the  contract  for 
building  the  roads,  by  the  terms  of  which  the 
construction  company  was  released  from  any 
obligation  to  complete  them  after  it  had  used  up 
all  its  money.  It  then  appeared  that  the  railroad 
companies  had  paid  at  the  rate  of  $25,000  a 
mile  for  fifty-five  miles  of  road  which  had  not 
been  constructed.  From  time  to  time  Forbes,  to 
prevent  if  possible  an  open  breach  in  the  C.  B. 
&  Q.  board,  had  tried  to  get  the  directors  who 
were  members  of  the  construction  company  to 
agree  to  some  act  of  restitution  to  the  bond- 
holders, proposing  to  join  them  as  a  fellow  di- 
rector in  bearing  his  share  of  the  burden  and 
the  blame  ;  but  now,  the  bringing  to  light  of  this 
contract,  of  the  vicious  clause  in  which  the  Bos- 
ton contractor-directors  declared  that  they  had 
been  wholly  ignorant,  at  the  same  time  that  it 
was  further  proof  of  the  need  of  a  new  dispensa- 
tion, rendered  a  peaceful  adjustment  highly  im- 
probable. Nevertheless,  as  the  following  appeal 
to  one  of  these  men  shows,  Forbes  left  nothing 
undone  to  prevent  the  personal  estrangements 


174        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

that,  to  a  man  of  his  sense  of  loyalty,  seemed 
nothing  short  of  a  calamity. 

The  proposition  which  I  made  yesterday  would, 
I  think,  preserve  sufficient  harmony  in  our  circle 
to  enable  us,  or  most  of  us,  to  work  together  for 
the  common  good.  If  the  investigating  commit- 
tee will  agree  to  accept  it  and  recommend  it  as  the 
best  thing  practicable,  it  will  relieve  them  of  the  ne- 
cessity of  presenting  to  the  bondholders  the  alter- 
native ;  what  blame  their  report  must  involve  I 
shall,  under  this  proposition,  take  my  just  share  of. 

You  who  went  into  the  construction  company 
then  holding  a  contract  for  getting  possession 
of  all  the  bonds  and  assets  of  the  Eiver  Roads, 
with  a  clause  added  relieving  them  from  any 
obligation  to  huild  the  roads,  and  under  which 
the  bonds  you  recommended  have  scattered  ruin 
among  large  numbers  of  innocent  people,  have 
placed  yourselves  in  a  most  unfortunate  position. 
No  matter  how  thoughtlessly  you  assumed  this 
position,  no  matter  how  innocent  of  intended 
harm  to  others,  you  have  done  the  harm,  and 
by  concealing  from  me  the  fact  that  you  had  an 
interest  as  contractor  behind  your  interest  as  a 
bondholder  of  the  River  Roads  and  director  of 
C.  B.  &  Q.,  you  have  led  me  to  join  in  causing 
the  mischief. 

I  have  offered  to  join  you  in  a  very  slight 
measure  of  reparation  for  our  folly  and  neglect 
— I  now  once  more  ask  you  in  the  name  of  our 
long  tried  friendship  to  accept  my  offer.^  ^ 

1  February  13,  1875. 


A  RAILROAD  BATTLE  175 

Feeling  as  strongly  as  he  did  the  pain  of  a 
personal  breach,  Forbes  held  back,  till  almost 
too  late,  from  the  alternative  of  war, — that  is, 
a  campaign  to  oust  enough  of  the  opposing  di- 
rectors at  the  coming  annual  election  of  the  C. 
B.  &  Q.  board  to  give  his  party  control.  But 
when  fight  was  at  last  forced  upon  him,  he  flung 
himself  into  the  struggle  with  all  his  wonted  zest 
and  relentlessness.  His  two  battlefields  were  the 
meeting  of  the  Dubuque  bondholders  in  Boston 
on  February  17,  to  hear  the  report  of  the  inves- 
tigating committee,  and  the  annual  meeting  of 
the  C.  B.  &  Q.  stockholders  in  Chicago  on  Feb- 
ruary 24.  The  story  of  the  contests  is  best  given 
in  the  animated  narrative  of  the  general-in-chief, 
written  to  a  member  of  his  family  while  the  glow 
of  battle  was  still  on  him. 

We  had  on  the  whole  quite  a  lively  time,  of 
which  the  scraps  sent  will  give  you  some  hints. 
Perhaps  the  most  dramatic  performance  was  our 
meeting,  a  week  ago  Wednesday,  of  Dubuque 
victims  (our  second  Dubuque).  At  the  first  one, 
two  weeks  earlier,  I  had  given  our  associates  the 
first  of  the  Sibylline  leaves,  to  accept  a  very  soft 

path  opened  to  them ;  but  S the  magnificent, 

wrapped  in  his  panoply  of  law  and  self-suffi- 
ciency, coolly  declined,  as  if  he  had  spoken  and 
the  world  must  bow  (and  no  small  dog  like  me 
must  bow-wow  !  ).  Well,  when  the  second  day  of 
fate  was  approaching,  I  spent  Sunday  in  cooking 


176        AN  AMERICAN   RAILROAD  BUILDER 

another  dish  which  I  offered  them,  a  good  deal 
harder  to  digest  than  the  first  but  still  emi- 
nently proper  and  quite  within  limits.  This  I 

begged  B to  accept,  adopt  and  advocate,  and 

thus  avoid  [a  fight].  This  was  declined  as  indi- 
gestible, but  with  less  confidence,  for  the  skies 

had  begun  to  lower  and  my  appeal  to  B 

was  solemn.  They  were  blinded  and  obstinate, 
so  on  Wednesday  we  went  to  the  meeting  igno- 
rant whether  they  would  skulk  or  fight.  In  a 
room  full  of  some  one  hundred  or  one  hundred 
and  fifty  indignant  bondholders,  we  found  my 

old  friend at  the  front  like  a  lion  at  bay, 

the  others  deserting  him  and  keeping  in  the  back- 
ground. Clifford  was  chairman ;  and  Charles 
Bowditch,  secretary  of  the  investigating  commit- 
tee, read  the  report,  which  might  well  be  called 
the  indictment,  and  which  was  very  considerably 
made  up  of  my  testimony  —  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  direct- 
ors having   dodged  the  most  important  points. 

This  brought to  his  feet,  and   you  have 

read  his  speech,  fired  directly  at  me,  so  that  the 
chair  had  frequently  to  call  him  to  address  the 
chair.  He  is  a  very  powerful  speaker,  and  of 
course  I  was  like  a  small  mouse  under  the  whisk- 
ers of  grimalkin,  or  of  a  fierce  bull-terrier  !  You 
have  had  the  speeches,  so  I  will  only  give  you 
these  outlines  of  the  scene,  which  lasted  from 
eleven  to  about  three.  My  best  speeches  amounted 
to  two  or  three  words,  interjected  here  and  there 

in  the  chinks  of 's  oratory,  but  which  found 

the  holes  in  his  armor.  Getting  through  this, 
wearied  and  full  of  bad  air,  Griswold  and  Will 


A  RAILROAD  BATTLE  177 

[W.  H.  Forbes]  and  I  had  to  take  up  the  ques- 
tion of  what  next?  Should  we  go  on  fighting 
from  the  outside,  or  should  we,  with  only  three 
days'  time,  try  to  change  the  Board  ?  .  .   . 

They  had  been  getting  proxies  for  the  annual 
meeting  of  24th  February  ever  since  20th  Janu- 
ary, while  we  had  Thursday,  Friday,  and  Sat- 
urday to  work  our  coup  cVetat  in,  as  Will  and 
Griswold  had  to  leave  Saturday  afternoon  for 
Chicago,  if  we  were  to  make  the  fight!  We  de- 
termined to  try  it,  and  at  once  had  to  frame  ad- 
vertisements, choose  our  list  of  directors  and  get 
them  all  into  the  New  York,  Albany,  and  Bos- 
ton papers  by  telegraph,  also  to  get  the  steno- 
grapher to  write  out  the  pithy  parts  of  his  Du- 
buque report  and  send  this  off  to  New  York  by 
telegraph.  We  did  not  know  then  how  much  the 
press  were  interested  in  the  subject.  We  found 
afterwards  that  they  had  one  or  two  steno- 
graphers, and  the  "Tribune"  reporter  sent  on 
1000  words  by  wire  that  afternoon.  Then  I  had 
to  write  letters  and  telegrams,  and  talk,  and  do 
everything  but  sleep  !  In  brief  we  had  a  good 
old  war-time.  P.  W.  Chandler  says  there  had 
not  been  so  much  excitement  in  Boston  any  day 
for  thirty-five  years  (he  meant  in  business  cir- 
cles) as  the  day  our  advertisement  came  oat.  On 
Wednesday  24th,  Will  and  Griswold  in  Chicago 
had  22,000  majority  or  say  about  90,000  votes 
out  of  155,000  that  were  thrown,  and  carried 
our  whole  ticket  except  T.  J.  Coolidge  —  that 
tender-hearted  old  Green  ordering  his  large  batch 
of  votes  thrown  for  D ,  and  thus  electing 


178        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

him.  He  however  is,  I  guess,  docile  as  a  kitten, 
and  I  have  no  doubt  we  can  now  have  our  own 
way  on  all  reasonable  things,  and  you  know  I 
never  want  any  other.  Will  got  back  last  night, 
and  now,  the  fight  being  over,  the  work  begins, 
for  with  victory  will,  I  fear,  come  responsibility 
and  care.  It  would  have  been  far  easier,  just  to 
have  stepped  out  and  sold  my  stock,  and  had  an 
easy  life ;  and  I  expect  to  repent  not  doing  so.^ 

The  significance  of  this  victory  was  shown  in 
the  immediate  appointment  of  George  Tyson  as 
auditor,  "  a  very  good  and  forcible  one,"  and 
with  his  arrival  in  Chicago  a  new  era  began  in 
the  company's  methods  of  accounting.  The  River 
Roads  were  sold  to  the  Chicago,  Milwaukee,  and 
St.  Paul,  and  the  claims  of  the  bondholders  of 
these  roads  upon  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  directors  who 
had  recommended  the  bonds  were  recognized, 
though  the  amount  of  money  restored  to  the 
victims  was  necessarily  small.  Since  those  of  the 
contractor-directors  who  still  remained  on  the 
board  could  not  fail  to  see  that  the  success  of 
the  men  and  measures  that  they  had  opposed 
had  put  their  property  on  a  solider  basis  than 
ever  before,  it  was  worth  while  for  them  to  swal- 
low their  pride  for  the  sake  of  remaining  in  the 
family  and  sharing  in  its  prosperity.  In  the  course 
of  the  next  five  or  six  years,  however,  several  more 

1  February  26  and  28,  1875. 


A  RAILROAD   BATTLE  179 

of  the  older  directors  gave  way  to  younger  men, 
among  the  newcomers  being  T.  Jefferson  Cool- 
idge,  Charles  J.  Paine,  and  William  Endicott, 
Jr.,  of  Boston,  Peter  Geddes  of  New  York,  and 
Wirt  Dexter  of  Chicajro. 

But  the  most  far-reachinof  result  of  the  con- 
test  was  the  election,  in  February,  1876,  of 
Charles  E.  Perkins  as  Vice-President  and  mem- 
ber of  the  Western  Executive  Committee.  Ever 
since  the  age  of  nineteen,  when,  as  has  been 
told,  he  had  begun  his  railroad  career  at  Bur- 
lington, he  had  been  under  the  eye  of  Forbes, 
and  by  natural  capacity  and  hard  work  had  risen 
from  one  position  of  responsibility  to  another. 
Through  his  knowledge  of  the  conditions  of 
Western  railroading  and  the  confidence  placed  in 
him  by  the  Eastern  directors,  it  at  length  became 
possible  to  organize  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  on  a  basis 
adequate  to  the  complex  needs  of  a  great  modern 
railroad.  Working  thus  under  Forbes  for  five 
years,  Perkins  proved  incontestably  his  fitness  to 
be  Forbes's  successor. 

The  effect  of  these  changes  in  the  manage- 
ment on  the  growth  of  the  road  constitutes  a 
striking  story,  which  belongs,  how^ever,  not  here, 
but  in  the  biography  of  Charles  E.  Perkins. 
The  increase  in  the  length  of  the  road  from 
1343  miles  in  1876  to  7661  in  1900  is  only  one 
of  the  obvious  signs  of  a  masterly  administra- 


180        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

tlon  which,  always  alert  to  extend  the  road  to 
meet  the  needs  of  the  country  which  it  served, 
was  no  less  zealous  in  maintaining  a  sound  fi- 
nancial policy,  and  in  developing  that  internal 
discipline  which  a  railroad,  as  a  vast  piece  of 
human  machinery,  cannot  safely  do  without. 
The  standing  which  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  attained 
among  American  railroads  in  the  years  of  Per- 
kins's presidency,  from  1881  to  1900,  is  the  best 
testimony  to  the  railroad  wisdom  of  John  M. 
Forbes. 

When,  in  1881,  Forbes,  after  six  years  of  re- 
sponsibility for  the  C.  B.  &  Q.,  during  three  of 
which  he  was  president,  transferred  his  load  to 
younger  shoulders,  he  was  sixty-nine  years  old. 
As  he  said  at  the  beginning  of  that  period,  it 
would  have  been  far  easier  to  have  stepped  out 
and  sold  his  stock.  That  he  had  not  done  so  was 
due  to  a  high  and  compelling  sense  of  personal 
responsibility.  To  him  a  railroad  was  not  a  toy 
to  be  tossed  from  one  financier  to  another,  but 
a  great  public  entity  like  the  state,  requiring, 
like  the  state,  from  each  generation  in  turn  the 
tribute  of  devoted  service. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    END 

rORBES'S  relinquishment  of  responsibility 
as  president  of  the  Chicago,  Burhngton,  and 
Quincy  did  not  mean  that  he  gave  up  all  interest 
in  railroad  work.  To  the  end  of  his  life  he  served 
as  chairman  of  the  board  of  directors,  and  the 
honor  in  which  he  was  held  by  his  associates  was 
shown  for  all  men  to  read  in  the  annual  reports, 
where  in  the  list  of  officers  his  name  led  all  the 
rest.  As  in  former  years,  his  brain  was  busy  with 
schemes  large  and  small  for  the  prosperity  and 
perfection  of  the  road,  but  now  he  must  content 
himself  with  dashing  oil  "  screeds  "  to  Perkins, 
to  be  executed  or  not  according  to  the  wisdom 
of  the  younger  generation.  He  loved  to  travel 
over  its  lines,  and  even  as  late  as  1890  made  a 
long  journey  to  the  Northwest,  returning  by  way 
of  San  Francisco.  By  such  means  he  kept  in  per- 
sonal touch  with  the  widely  scattered  officials  of 
the  system  ;  and  when  all  other  ties  to  what  had 
been  the  great  interest  of  his  life  failed,  he  was 
still  a  part  of  the  road  by  virtue  of  the  strongest 
bond  of  all,  —  that  of  vital  human  relationship. 
This  gradual  withdrawal  from  railroad  busi- 


182         AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD   BUILDER 

ness  was  accompanied  by  retirement  from  par- 
ticipation in  public  affairs.  To  the  Independents 
with  whom  he  alHed  himself  in  the  campaign  of 
1884  he  could  bring  little  in  the  way  of  what 
he  would  have  called  work,  though  the  influence 
of  his  name  and  the  stimulus  of  his  counsels 
were  contributions  of  great  value.  With  the 
Cleveland  administration  he  was  naturally  in 
touch,  and  he  followed  with  unflagging  interest 
the  new  issues  of  the  day,  particularly  as  the 
question  of  free  silver  became  more  and  more 
acute.  Perhaps,  however,  the  subject  to  which 
he  gave  most  continuous  effort  was  the  matter 
of  free  ships.  Old  age,  with  its  many  memories 
of  younger  days,  had  brought  back  his  early  in- 
terest in  maritime  affairs.  He  recalled  the  proud 
share  which  he  and  his  brother  had  had  in  the 
days  when  American  ships  were  able  "to  lead 
the  world  in  foreign  commerce,  carrying  English 
goods  from  England  to  the  East,  covering  the 
Eastern  seas  with  their  flags,  and  doing  abso- 
lutely the  whole  packet  business  between  Eng- 
land and  America,  so  that  nobody,  however 
bigoted  his  admiration  of  the  mother-country, 
ever  dreamed  of  trusting  himself  to  any  but  an 
American  packet-ship  on  the  Atlantic  "  ;  and  he 
felt  keenly  the  mortification  of  navigation  laws 
which  prevented  him  from  sailing  under  the 
United  States  flag  such  few  ships  as  he  owned  in 


# 


THE  END  183 

world-commerce.  To  this  feeling  he  never  lost 
an  opportunity  of  bearing  witness,  whether  in 
the  form  of  testifying  before  a  Congressional 
committee,  addressing  a  meeting  of  the  Tariff 
Keform  League,  preparing  a  pamphlet  on  free 
ships,  or  writing  to  the  newspapers  over  his  war- 
time signatures  of  "  Senex ''  and  "  Audax." 

In  the  intervals  between  these  occupations, 
Forbes  gave  considerable  time  to  writing  his 
reminiscences.  This  task,  begun  in  1884  at  the 
instance  of  his  children,  occupied  him  for  many 
years,  and,  by  helping  him  to  recall  the  days 
when  great  deeds  had  been  done,  broke,  as  it 
were,  the  fall  into  his  present  state  of  inactivity. 
His  powers  of  expression  had  lost  none  of  their 
sprightliness,  force,  and  humor,  and  the  result 
was  a  record  extremely  valuable  as  reminiscences, 
and  far  more  entertaining  than  most  works  of 
this  class.  The  mass  of  his  correspondence,  scru- 
pulously preserved  in  letter-press  books  and  files, 
was  too  enormous  to  be  manageable,  but  it  served 
as  a  guide  to  his  memory  and  a  veritable  store- 
house of  pungent  epistolary  examples. 

Whatever  the  pleasure  that  the  preparation  of 
this  story  gave  him,  he  took  a  modest  view  of 
the  career  which  it  narrated.  "  I  certainly  have 
worked  to  do  something  that  would  form  my 
contribution  toward  the  common  welfare,  but 
think  my  ambition  has  rather  been  to  accomplish 


184       AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

sometliing  worth  doing  .  .  .  than  to  appear  to 
have  done  great  things  in  my  Httle  sphere." 

Thus  he  continued,  even  up  to  the  milestone 
of  fourscore  years,  though,  as  powers  of  body 
and  mind  slowly  failed,  the  world  of  affairs  slid 
beyond  his  ken.  In  the  five  years  of  life  that  re- 
mained to  him, — that  time  when 

The  outline  of  the  whole 

As  round  eve's  shades  their  framework  roll, 

Grandly  fronts  for  once  thy  soul,  — 

the  love  of  nature  and  the  affection  for  friends 
and  family  held  him  by  as  strong  a  tie  as  ever. 
He  was  keen  to  revisit  scenes  that  he  had  loved, 
and  for  certain  states  of  restlessness  and  mental 
agitation  travel  was  still  the  best  remedy;  he 
slept  better  in  boats  and  on  trains  than  in  his 
own  bed.  He  took  many  a  cruise  in  his  yacht,  the 
Wild  Duck ;  his  favorite  exercise  of  riding  he  was 
able  to  continue  till  within  a  few  weeks  of  his 
death.  Delight  in  the  island  home  of  Naushon, 
the  improvement  of  which  had  been  his  recreation 
for  forty  years,  was  still  his  chief  solace.  "  Dur- 
ing the  summer  and  autumn  of  1897,"  writes 
his  daughter,  "  he  drove  daily,  while  at  Naushon, 
inspecting  the  tree-planting,  and  fences,  and  the 
*  Sargent  treatment '  of  old  forest  favorites  whose 
lives  he  wished  to  prolong.  After  his  inspection 
he  would  get  out  of  the  wagon  and  lie  down,  with 
his  head  in  the  shade,  and  sleep  for  half  an  hour 


THE  END  185 

or  SO.  Then  his  saddle-horse  would  be  brouo^ht, 
and  he  would  mount  and  ride  back,  sometimes 
four  or  five  miles,  to  the  mansion  house, — his 
man  always  riding  close  beside  him,  however, 
for  his  failing  sight  made  this  necessary."  ^ 

But  the  tie  that  held  longest  and  strongest 
was  that  of  human  affection.  "The  ennobling: 
difference  between  one  man  and  another  is  that 
one  feels  more  than  another,"  says  Mark  Patti- 
son  of  Milton.^  Forbes's  capacity  for  intense 
feeling  had  ever  been  his  most  marked  charac- 
teristic, and  now  the  nature  thus  ennobled  dwelt 
with  humility  and  admiration  on  human  good- 
ness wherever  it  had  touched  his  life.  His  cus- 
tom of  giving,  an  instinct  quickened  and  de- 
veloped by  eighty  years  of  habit,  was  still  his 
readiest  way  of  expressing  this  admiration,  and 
here  at  least  there  was  no  sign  of  failing  powers. 
When  further  lapse  of  vitality  made  the  kindling 
of  his  old  self  still  more  fleeting  and  intermit- 
tent, the  moment  in  which  it  rekindled  never 
failed  to  reveal  his  gratitude  for  having  shared 
so  richly  in  the  best  that  life  has  to  give.  Thus, 
sheltered  and  enfolded  in  love,  he  waited  the  end. 

On  Monday,  September  the  26th  [writes  his 
daughter],  Dr.  Stedman  and  my  eldest  sister 
came  to  the  island  to  go  home  with  him.  The 

1  Letters  and  Recollections ^  vol.  ii,  p.  234, 
a  Life  of  Milton,  1^,  QZ. 


186        AN  AMERICAN  RAILROAD  BUILDER 

next  day  a  brisk  north  wind  came  up,  covering 
the  bay  with  white  caps ;  and  bright  sunshine 
streamed  into  the  house.  My  father  sat  in  the 
parlor  until  it  was  time  to  go,  and  then  asked  to 
be  taken  into  each  of  the  ground-floor  rooms. 
He  sat  at  his  writing-table,  whence  so  many  let- 
ters had  taken  flight,  and  touched  lovingly  the 
inkstand  and  pens  as  if  loath  to  part  from  these 
old  friends.  Then  my  husband  led  him  to  the 
carriage,  where  his  daughter  was  waiting  for 
him.  The  little  granddaughter  was  brought  out 
and  held  up  to  him  in  the  wagon,  and  he  kissed 
her  lovingly  and  bade  her  good-by,  and  then 
said  to  my  sister,  as  they  drove  off,  looking  up  at 
the  old  mansion  house,  ''  Never  again  perhaps." 
He  was  driven  carefully  to  the  wharf,  where  the 
launch,  steered  by  his  faithful  Charles  Olsen,  was 
ready  for  him.  The  gun  of  the  Wild  Duck  at  her 
moorings  saluted  him  as  he  steamed  past  her  down 
the  harbor ;  and  so  he  left  the  island. 

I  feel  as  if  any  vivid  life  ended  for  him  here. 
.  .  .  On  Thursday,  October  the  6th,  pneumonia 
set  in,  and  he  died  on  the  following  Wednes- 
day morning,  October  the  12th,  1898. 

Mrs.  Howe's  "  Battle-Hymn  of  the  Republic  " 
had  been  for  years  the  tune  that  stirred  and 
moved  him  most,  and  it  was  the  last  that  he 
greeted  with  the  old  motion  of  the  hand,  beat- 
ing time.  At  his  funeral  it  was  sung;  and  we 
all  felt  that  no  truer  citizen  ever  served  the  re- 
public which  inspired  the  verse.^ 

^  Letters  and  Recollections ^  vol.  ii,  p.  236. 


APPENDIX 

Letter  of  J.  M.  Forbes  to  Charles  Sumj^ter 

CONCERNING   LaND    GrANTS   TO    RAILROADS 

Boston,  Feb.  14,  1853. 

Dear  Sir  :  — 

I  hear  privately  tliat  a  gigantic  land  scheme  is  in 
preparation  to  be  sprung  upon  Congress,  in  such  shape 
as  to  conciliate  all  conflicting  interests  by  giving  some- 
thing to  every  scheme,  and  something  to  the  old  states, 
and  to  be  forced  through  under  the  pressure  of  the  last 
days. 

Now,  on  general  principles,  I  have  always  advo- 
cated the  right  and  duty  of  Congress  to  give  land  to 
railroads  that  require  it  in  order  to  render  the  other 
land  remaining  more  valuable,  and  perhaps  I  would 
go  still  further,  and  use  the  land  for  the  purpose  of 
increasing  facilities  for  transportation  of  produce  and 
passengers,  irrespective  of  the  added  value  of  remain- 
ing lands ;  but  there  is  no  action  of  Congress  that  needs 
such  deliberation  and  examination  as  this  giving  of 
bonuses  to  individuals  or  companies.  None  is  so  open 
to  abuse,  and  I  hope  you  will  agree  with  me  that  no 
hasty  log-rolling  legislation  ought  to  be  permitted  on 
this  subject. 

You  may  say  that  every  law  is  subject  to  log-rolling 
influences,  and  that  if  you  oppose  one  on  this  ground 
you  must  all.  I  admit  that  little  is  done  in  the  world 


188  APPENDIX 

from  unmixed  motives  of  good,  but  when  we  come  to 
a  measure  which  is  manifestly  urged  by  schemers  and 
speculators  and  for  private  ends,  of  doubtful  good  even 
to  the  parties  who  are  asking  for  it,  it  seems  safe  to  op- 
pose it,  even  if  it  have  some  elements  about  it  of  which 
you  approve. 

If  it  is  expedient  or  right  to  give  the  new  states  the 
public  lands,  far  the  safest  thing  will  be  to  give  it  to 
each  state,  and  allow  the  state  governments  to  appor- 
tion it ;  restricting  them,  if  you  please,  to  put  such  a 
share  into  railroads  and  plank  roads,  and  canals,  such 
for  education,  and  such  a  share  for  the  insane,  the 
blind,  etc.,  etc. 

There  are  now  about  7500  miles  of  new  railroad  in 
course  of  construction,  which  when  properly  equipped 
with  machinery  shops  and  depots,  and  finished  with 
proper  ballast  and  bridges,  will  not  cost  under  $20,000. 
per  mile,  or  say  $150,000,000,  —  one  hundred  and 
fifty  millions  —  (and  this  is  a  low  estimate),  most 
of  which  has  to  be  borrowed  and  the  whole  expended 
within  two  years.  These  are  chiefly  in  theWest  through 
a  sparse  population.  Is  not  this  experiment  enough 
for  one  while?  and,  however  sound  the  policy  may  be 
of  giving  lands  to  make  railways,  is  it  wise  to  stimu- 
late enterprise  in  this  direction  any  further,  at  a  time 
when  it  is  clear  that  too  many  roads  are  under  way 
without  any  such  stimulus  ? 

If  the  western  states  go  much  further  or  faster  into 
railways,  we  shall  inevitably  have  another  183T-8,  as 
well  as  an  1835-6  ;  and,  like  that  epoch,  the  stimulated, 
overstrained  effort  will  be  followed  by  a  state  of  reac- 


APPENDIX  189 

tion  that  will  be  very  unfavorable  to  the  real  interests 
of  the  West.  By  stimulating  the  building  of  roads, 
where  they  are  not  wanted,  and  where  the  leading 
cause  for  building  them  is  the  gift  of  public  lands,  we 
shall  throw  such  discredit  (when  the  break-down 
comes)  on  our  western  roads,  that  the  building  of 
useful  roads  will  be  retarded  or  indefinitely  post- 
poned. 

Foreign  capitalists,  as  I  happen  to  know,  are  already 
frightened  by  the  immense  extent  of  new  railroads 
begun,  and  the  time  is  very  near  at  hand  when  the 
enormous  issues  of  railway  bonds  will  glut  the  home 
market. 

If  I  could  have  any  influence  on  legislation,  it  should 
be  first,  to  devise  some  plan  by  which  the  Government 
should  be  bound  by  contract  to  have  the  Californian 
railroad  built,  and  the  administration  committed  to  its 
being  done  promptly  and  efficiently;  that  the  Execu- 
tive should  be  held  accountable  to  the  country  just  as 
much  as  it  would  for  the  vigorous  prosecution  of  a 
foreign  war. 

I  would  then  apply  all  the  Government  lands  to  that 
object  first.  The  West  would  expect  to  get,  and  would 
get,  the  greatest  good  from  it,  by  finding  a  market  for 
their  produce,  and  for  their  surplus  labor  (on  the  Pa- 
cific side),  while  the  whole  country  would  get  the  bene- 
fit of  it,  by  its  binding  us  together,  and  by  the  addi- 
tional guarantee  of  peace  that  it  would  give  us.  For 
what  application  of  money  to  forts,  frigates,  and  armies 
would  strengthen  our  Pacific  coast,  like  a  line  of  rail- 
way and  telegraph,  that  in  four  days  would  bring  the 


190  APPENDIX 

militia  of  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi  to  the  shores  of 
the  Pacific? 

A  few  years  ago  the  western  states  needed  Govern- 
ment help  to  build  their  roads  ;  now  the  capacity  of  the 
West  to  support  all  the  roads  that  are  really  needed 
is  acknowledged,  and  the  great  danger  is  that  too  many 
will  be  built. 

On  the  other  hand,  private  or  state  enterprise  can- 
not build  the  Pacific  road,  and  if  it  could,  it  is  doubt- 
ful if  it  would  pay.  It  is  required  by  the  whole  coim- 
try,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  as  an  experiment 
in  political  economy  it  will  be  eminently  successful  if 
efficiently  prosecuted.  It  will  add  enormously  to  the 
wealth  of  the  country,  and  will  contribute  more  to 
raising  the  wages  of  the  working  classes,  by  opening 
gold-labor,  than  any  legislative  creation  can  possibly 
do  in  any  other  way. 

A  million  of  people  can  earn  at  a  low  estimate 
$600.  per  annum  in  California,  who  now  only 
earn  3300.  per  annum  ;  difPerenee  $  300,000,000. 

from  which  deduct  expense  of  carrying  them 
out  with  their  barrel  of  flour  and  barrel  of 
pork  and  barrel  of  groceries  each,  say  from 
the  Mississippi  ;  say  not  over  1800  miles  at 
3  cents  a  mile  for  passengers  and  3  cents 
per  ton  mile  for  merchandise  (which  in 
both  cases  is  large),  and  you  have  $54:.  for 
passenger  and  for  one  third  of  a  ton  of  mer- 
chandise $18.  =  $72. ;  throw  in  for  baggage 
$28.  each,  and  you  deduct  100,000,000 

$200,000,000 

leaving  a  gain  to  the  wealth  of  the  country  of  $200, 
000,000,  as  a  return  for  the  1100,000,000,  which  the 


APPENDIX  191 

road  will  surely  cost.  I  don't  mean  that  this  would 
happen  the  first  year,  but  I  believe  250,000  men  would 
go  out  the  first  year  after  the  road  is  finished,  unless 
in  the  mean  time  labor  has  been  equalized  by  the  Isth- 
mus route  by  the  importation  of  a  million  of  inhabit- 
ants into  California ;  in  which  case  the  necessity  for 
binding  to  us  such  a  populous  state,  with  such  elements 
of  increase  in  it,  will  be  apparent  to  all. 

Excuse  this  long  story,  into  which  I  am  led  by  the 
largeness  of  the  subject,  and  by  my  want  of  time  for 
condensation. 

It  is  possible  that  I  may  be  influenced  by  my  con- 
nection with  western  roads  that  have  been  built  by 
dint  of  hard  work  in  hard  times,  when  it  was  a  word 
of  reproach  to  be  concerned  in  western  enterprises, 
and  that  these  considerations  induce  me  to  look  un- 
favorably upon  other  roads  getting  help  from  the  public 
treasury  or  domain. 

To  avoid  such  suspicion,  I  mark  this  letter  private, 
and  do  not  wish  my  name  mentioned  in  the  matter  ; 
but  you,  I  know,  will  have  candor  enough  and  acuteness 
enough  to  give  due  weight  to  any  of  my  reasoning  that 
is  good,  and  to  make  the  needful  allowance  for  any 
selfish  bias,  as  against  the  weight  that  might  otherwise 
be  due  to  the  opinions  of  one  who  has  had  some  expe- 
rience in  western  railroad-building. 

If  you  have  many  such  long-winded  constituents  I 
offer  you  my  condolences ! 


INDEX 


(All  railroad  lines  are  indexed  under  the  heading  Raileoads.) 


Adams,  Charles  Francis,  120, 126, 

128,  129,  132,  133,  145. 
Adams,  Charles  F.,  132. 
Andrew,  J.  A.,  113,  128,  133, 138, 

144. 
Appleton,  W.,  61. 
Ashburner,  G.,  104. 
Aspinwall,  W.  H.,  114,  122. 

Baring  Bros.,  6,  9,  40,  63,  69,  73, 
92,  122,  124,  125,  166,  172. 

Bates,  J.,  125. 

Beecher,  H.  W.,  133. 

Blaine,  J.  G.,  150. 

Booth,  Gen.,  167,  168. 

Bowditch,  C,  176. 

Bright,  J.,  130. 

Brooks,  J.  W.,  24-42,  50,  55,  57, 
61, 75,  92,  97-99. 

Brown,  J.,  113. 

Buchanan,  J.,  114. 

Cameron,  S.,  117. 
Carlyle,  T.,  136,  152. 
Cats'  tails,  C.  B.  &  Q.,  160. 
Chandler,  P.  W.,  177. 
Chase,  S.  P.,  125,  133. 
Choate,  J.  H.,  101,  102. 
Cleveland,  G.,  151,  182. 
Clifford,  J.  H.,  176. 
Cobden,  R.,  130. 
Cog-swell,  J.  G.,  3,  7. 
Coolidge,  T.  J.,  177,  179. 
Cooper,  P.,  141. 
Corning-,  E.,  57,  75,  86. 
Credit  Mobilier,  154,  156. 
Cumberland  Road,  21. 

Davis,  J.,  132. 
Dexter,  W.,  179. 
Dickens,  Charles,  17,  21,  23. 
Dorsey,  S.  W.,  150. 
Douglas,  S.  A.,  49. 


Emerson,  R.  W.,  16,  108. 
Endicott,  W.,  Jr.,  179. 
Erie  Canal,  20, 45. 
"  Erie  War,"  49. 
Evarts,  W.  M.,  132. 

Felch,  A.,  27. 

Fessenden,  W.  P.,  149. 

Field,  D.  D.,  139. 

Fitch, ,  38,  39. 

Fitzpatrick,  Bishop,  133. 

Forbes,  John  Murray,  birth,  1 ; 
Bchooling-,  2, 3  ;  life  in  China,  5- 
10  ;  recreation,  3,  9,  10,  12,  16, 
1(52,  163,  184 ;  marriage,  7  ;  ill- 
health,  6,  11,  12,  57-59,  143, 
184,  186;  on  the  education  of 
his  children,  13-15 ;  interest  in 
ships,  12,  25,  70,  145-148,  182, 
183;  at  Naushon,  12,  59,  111, 
160,  184,  186;  Emerson's  esti- 
mate of,  16 ;  purchase  of  Mich. 
Cent.,  25-30 ;  first  journey  to 
Chicago,  32-36 ;  early  financing 
of  Mich.  Cent.,  40-42 ;  on  Cali- 
fornia gold  fever,  44;  appeals 
to  foreign  capitalists,  45,  46; 
on  building  without  a  charter, 
50 ;  connection  with  Great  West- 
ern, 51,  52;  report  as  president 
of  Mich.  Cent.,  53,  54 ;  general 
railroad  activities  and  responsi- 
bilities, 55-58 ;  resignation  as 
president  of  Mich.  Cent.,  58 ;  in 
panic  of  1857,  59-65,  88,  89; 
views  on  immigration,  66-69 ; 
interest  in  European  market  for 
grain,  69  ;  interest  in  railroad  to 
the  Pacific,  70, 189-191 ;  interest 
in  Chicago  &  Aurora,  74-76 ; 
organization  of  C.  B.  &  Q.,  76- 
78 ;  comments  on  railroad  fi- 
nance, 78-80 ;  on  land  grants,  81- 


194 


INDEX 


83 ;  interest  in  Hannibal  &  St. 
Joseph,  84,  89-93,  15G  ;  interest 
in  B.  &  M,,  84-87,  92,  93  ;  end 
of  first  period  of  railroad  work, 
95,  96 ;  interest  in  human  side 
of  railroad  work,  97-103  ;  friend- 
ship with  C.  R.  Lowell,  103- 
106 ;  early  political  connections, 
108;  on  democracy  and  anti-slav- 
ery, 108-111 ;  joins  Republican 
party,  111-113;  aids  J.  Brown, 
113;  helps  Gov.  Andrew,  113, 
114;  member  of  Peace  Confer- 
ence, 114;  plans  reinforcement 
of  Sumter,  114,  115;  helps  in 
forwarding  Mass.  troops,  115, 
116;  quality  of  his  patriotism, 
116,  117;  influence  at  Washing- 
ton, 117,  118;  helps  in  raising 
troops,  119,  120;  mission  to 
England,  120-134 ;  organization 
of  Loyal  Publication  League, 
134-137 ;  urges  arming  of  the 
negro,  138  ;  in  presidential  cam- 
paign of  1864,  138-142  ;  opinion 
of  Lincoln,  142  ;  on  reconstruc- 
tion and  Alabama  claims,  144, 
145  ;  experience  with  the  Meteor, 
145-148 ;  labors  in  connection 
•with  national  finance,  148-150; 
member  of  Republican  National 
Committee,  150;  becomes  an 
Independent,  151 ;  standard  of 
public  service,  151-153 ;  con- 
servatism in  business  methods, 
154-156  ;  views  on  public  opin- 
ion in  railroad  matters,  156-158  ; 
opposition  to  Boston,  Hartford, 
&  Erie,  157;  attitude  on  Gran- 
ger legislation,  157,  158;  cats' 
tails  story,  159, 160 ;  on  dangers 
of  C.  B.  &  Q.  situation,  162- 
166,  172  ;  in  the  Dubuque  Roads 
fight,  165-178 ;  president  of  the 
C.  B.  &  Q.,  179,  180;  retire- 
ment from  business,  181 ;  retire- 
ment from  politics,  182  ;  "  Re- 
miniscences," 183  ;  last  days  at 
Naushon,  184-186 ;  death,  186. 

Forbes,  Margaret  Perkins,  1. 

Forbes,  Ralph  Bennet,  1,  2. 


Forbes,  Robert  Bennet,  1,  2,  5, 

26,  148  n.,  182. 
Forbes,  Sarah  Hathaway,  7. 
Forbes,  T.  T.,  1,  4,  5,  6. 
Forbes,  Wm.   H.,  118,   119,  177, 

178. 
Forster,  J.,  131. 
Forster,  W.  E.,  130. 
Fox,  G.  v.,   115,  118,  121,  133, 

140. 
Fremont,  J.  C,  112,  139. 

Geddes,  P.,  179. 

Gold,  discovery  of  in  California, 

44. 
Granger  legislation,  157,  158. 
Graves,  J.  K.,  167,  168,  170, 171. 
Green,  J.  C,  29,  57,  90,  177. 
Griswold,  J.  N.  A.,  62,  166,  170, 

176,  177. 

Hale,  E.  K,  67. 
Hallowell,  N.  P.,  118. 
Heard,  A.,  5,  8. 
Higginson,  H.  L.,  118. 
Houqua,  5,  8,  9,  107. 
Howe,  S.  G.,  112. 
Howe,  T.,  32. 
Hughes,  T.,  131. 

111.  and  Mich.  Canal,  48,  71. 
Immigration,  value  of,  43,  66-69. 

Jackson,  Gen.  T.  J.,  130. 
Johnson,  A.,  145. 
Joy,  J.  F.,  24,  28,  50,  57,  75,  77, 
85,  86,  112. 

Kemble,  F.,  131. 

Land  Grants,  71,  72, 81-87,  93,  94, 

161,  169,  187-191. 
Lawrence,  A.  A.,  119. 
Lincoln,  A.,  123, 126, 137-140, 142. 
Lowell,  C.  R.,  103-106,  108,  118. 
Loyal  Publication  League,  N.  E., 

135-137,  157. 

McCulloch,  H.,  149. 
Martineau,  J.,  129. 
Meteor,  the,  145-148. 


INDEX 


195 


Milton,  J.,  185. 

Mt.  iSavage  Iron  Works,  104. 

Napoleon,  L.,  69. 

National  Pike,  21. 

Nanshon,  12,  59,  111,  160,  184, 
186. 

New  England  Emigrant  Aid  So- 
ciety, 145. 

New  England  Loyal  Publication 
League,  135-137,  157. 

Norton,  C.  E.,  135. 

Ogden,  W.  B.,  35,  36. 
Omaha  pool,  158. 

Paine,  C.  J.,  179. 

Panic  of  1837,  22,  71,  82. 

Panic  of  1857,  53,  59-65,  88,  89, 

93,  158. 
Panic  of  1873,  158,  166. 
Peace  Conference,  114. 
Perkins,  C.  E.,  102,  103,  161-163, 

167,  179-181. 
Perkins,  firm  of  J.  and  T.  H.,  2, 

4,5. 
Perkins,  James,  1,  10. 
Perkins,  S.  G,  1. 
Perkins,  T.  H.,  1,  41. 
Polk,  J.  K.,  132. 
Pooling,  53,  64,  158, 159. 

Railroads  : 

Auburn  &  Rochester,  24. 

Boston,  Hartford,  &  Erie,  157. 

Boston  &  Lowell,  28,  n. 

Boston  &  Providence,  28,  n. 

Boston  &  Worcester,  28,  n. 

Burlington  &  Missouri  in  Ne- 
braska, 160,  163. 

Burlington  &  Missouri  in  Iowa, 
84-87,  92,  93,  95,  102,  103, 
158,  161,  162,  166. 

Central  Military  Tract,  74,  76, 
78,  86. 

Chicago,  Burlington  &  Qnincy, 
55,  76-78,  81,  84,  85,  87-89, 
94, 95, 101, 103, 154, 158,  160- 
167,  171-181. 

Chicago,  Milwaukee  &  St.  Paul, 
178. 


Chicago  &  Aurora,  74-76,  86. 
Chicago  &  Galena,  75. 
Chicago  &  Northwestern,  164. 
Chicago  &  Rock  Island,  73,  77, 

79,  86. 
Dubuque  Roads,  161,  164-178. 
Erie,  60,  80,  154,  157. 
Grand  Trunk,  52. 
Great    Western,    Canada,     51, 

52. 
Hannibal  &  St.  Joseph,  84,  89, 

90-93,99,100,  111,  156. 
Illinois  Central,  44,  47,  49,  52, 

55,  71-75,  77,  81,  91,  94. 
Iowa  Pacific,  170,  171. 
Michigan  Central,  2.3-65, 73,  74, 

76,  79,  81,  85,  89-91,  98. 
Michigan  Southern,  23,  43,  46, 

47, 49-51, 53,  60, 63, 73, 79, 86. 
Mobile  &  Ohio,  44,  71,  81. 
New  Albany  &  Salem,  46,  47, 

52. 
N.  Y.  Central,  60. 
Northern  Cross,  74,  77,  89. 
Pacific  Railroad,  70,81, 189-191. 
Peoria     &    Oquawka,    74,    77, 

89. 
Union  Pacific,  161. 
Rhodes,  J.  F.,  88,  116, 117,  127. 
Round  Hill  School,  2,  12. 
Ruskin,  J.,  152. 
Russell,  Earl,  121,127,  133. 
RusseU,  H.  S.,  118,  119,  138. 
Russell,  S.,  34,  35. 
Russell  &  Co.,  5,  8, 10. 

Sanitary  Commission,  118. 
Sault  Ste.  Marie  Canal,  55,  98. 
Scott,  R.,  129. 
Scott,  W.,  115. 
Sedgwick,  C.  B.,  118,  119. 
Seward,  W.  H.,  39,  147,  148. 
Shaw,  R.  G.,  118. 
Smith,  G.,  131,  146. 
Sturgis,  R.,  10,  45. 
Sturgis,  W.,  61. 
Sumner.  C,  81,  144. 
Swain,  W.  W.,  12,  76.       . 

Tennyson,  A.,  152. 
Thayer,  J.  B.,  135. 


196 

Thayer,  J.  E.,  61-63,  85,  86. 
Toucey,  I.,  115. 
Tyson,  G.,  178. 

Upton,  G.  B.,  30. 


INDEX 


Walker,  R.  J.,  132. 
Ward,  S.  G.,  172. 
Watson,  R.  S.,  70. 
Webster,  D.,  26,  108. 
Wild  Duck,  the,  184,  186. 


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